Obama remains failure in the White House

Now that he has signed a perfectly useless “credit card holders rights act” into law, President Obama can take comfort in the knowledge that he still ranks first for the Google query failure in the White House, and this time he deserves the designation (rest assured, I voted for Obama).

Why is he a failure in the White House? 2 reasons.

First, Google — despite being told about this query many times — has neglected to fix the “failure in the white house” query. It was a secondary effect of the infamous “miserable failure” link bomb that Democrats conducted against then-President George W. Bush. Now Democrats can take pride in the knowledge that they have ensured Obama will be known as a “failure in the White House” for the rest of his term.

Secondly, today Obama signed into law the miserable credit cardholders’ rights act that accomplishes nothing toward protecting consumers against the usurious practices of the banking industry.

Keep in mind that I’m not standing in the ranks of people who have fallen behind on their credit card payments. I am one of those people who has paid the bill faithfully every month. I’m supposedly in “good standing” with my credit card.

Nonetheless, I and millions of other credit card holders was told in March that our interest rates would be tripled come May (and millions more accounts will see interest rates rise in June).

When angry consumers complained to Congress and the President about this outrageous rate hike, we were assured that our elected representatives would take immediate action to protect consumers against further bank abuses.

I’ve been alarmed ever since, as I realized all too quickly that President Obama and Congress lacked the political will to demand that the banks which took Federal bailout money rescind their unjustified rate hikes. Sure, the banks complain that they have seen an increase in defaults on credit card accounts.

Well, here’s a clue, President Obama: You’re about to see a LOT MORE DEFAULTS on credit card accounts before your stupid, useless law takes effect in nine months.

Many consumers announced they would immediately cancel their credit cards. After all, when the banks announced their rate hikes in March they gave everyone the option of closing their accounts. Problem is, when you do that you reduce your available credit and THAT is taken into consideration when your credit score is calculated.

So if you cancelled your credit card in April and now cannot obtain another one, guess why. Your credit sucks just enough to keep you from qualifying for a new credit card.

The trick, of course, is to get a new credit card with a lower interest rate and transfer the balance from the old card. But most consumers didn’t realize they needed to do that.

President Obama, having absolutely no knowledge about the situation, went ahead and supported the law so that people could carry guns into national parks — I mean, so that consumers would not have to worry about interest rate hikes being enacted against them individually (the law does nothing to prevent future mass rate hikes).

So consumers lost out three ways today:

First, the March-2009 announced rate hikes remain in place. Everyone who still has a credit card from those companies (J.P. Morgan, Citibank, and Capital One for sure) will still have to pay triple interest on new purchases.

Second, consumers who cancelled their cards with existing balances and who cannot now obtain new credit cards will take months, perhaps years to rebuild their credit.

Third, consumers can look forward to more interest rate hikes on their credit cards because the new law didn’t even impose a limit on credit card interest rates.

Aren’t you glad you voted for Obama? I sure am.

He is today’s “failure in the white house”. Hey, Google — did you get the message THIS time?

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Obama betrays voters, allows banks to hike rates

We pause our almost regularly scheduled science fiction-related content for me to share something important to millions of my fellow Americans.

The Obama administration has thrown us to the wolves. Now, let me get my Obama-supporter credentials out before you hang me. I voted for the man. And I feel like the current economic situation cannot be quickly or easily resolved.

But when major banks like Capital One announced in March that they were raising interest rates for all their credit card customers, President Obama led us to believe he was going to do something about the situation.

And yet, all he has done is invite a few bank CEOs to the White House for a photo opportunity and ask Congress to pass a perfectly useless “Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights” law. Why is it useless? Because it doesn’t do anything about the interest rate hikes.

Sure, the new law requires banks to give advance notice about interest rate hikes — they did that already.

It may protect us from future gratuitous rate hikes but people are in trouble now. You can’t just close your credit card account because doing so will hurt your credit score.

You see, when you apply for credit your credit score is based in part on how much you owe (your debt) compared to how much you COULD owe (your available credit). The more available credit you have, the better. Closing a credit card account reduces your available credit.

A lot of people have told me they are closing their credit card accounts. But they haven’t acquired new credit cards to replace those accounts. Some people should still be able to get new credit cards but other folks won’t. They will have too much debt and too little available credit.

Yes, it’s a stupid way to measure risk — but our banks have done a lot of stupid things over the past few years. For example, they pressured the Bush administration into making it more difficult to get a bankruptcy. What happened? More people than ever qualified for bankruptcy. Only the bankruptcy attorneys benefitted.

We cannot allow the banks to continue to set consumer protection policy in this country. They don’t care about what harm their decisions inflict on customers. They just want their money.

The Obama administration has failed the American people on this issue. President Obama should have taken action to prevent this month’s interest rate hikes from taking effect. In fact, I and many other Obama supporters believed he would do just that.

So we have to ask: What happened? Barack Obama, where is the leadership you promised us? Barack Obama, where is the change you promised us? I am very, very disappointed.

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SF-Fandom is a fan-run moderated Web discussion community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. Founded in 2001, SF-Fandom is part of the Xenite.Org Network of science fiction and fantasy Web sites.

How To Fight Capital One, Citibank APR Hikes

This post has nothing to do with science fiction and fantasy. The topic is just too important to ignore, however. In case you haven’t heard, several major banks have just announced major rate hikes on their credit cards for all their customers. Some banks are raising interest rates to the unbelievable level of 29% or more.

Capital One, which has been aggressively trying to draw new customers through its innovative television commercials, just dropped the bombshell on its customer base last week. So not only are we taxpayers bailing out the banks, we’re going to pay them more interest on our credit cards despite how well we have managed our credit up until now.

But we don’t have to take this sitting down. As consumers we have options and rights and we need to exercise those options and rights. But we also have to be careful. Consumer advocates are warning people to be careful NOT to just cut up their credit cards. As soon as you close your credit card account your available credit drops and your debt-to-available-credit ratio tanks. That hurts your credit score.

So you earn good credit by not using your available credit. You lose good credit by giving up available credit.

If you have been making payments on time and your balance is relatively low, try switching to another card. You’ll get an introductory credit rate that is much lower than the usurious interest Capital One, Citigroup, and J.P. Morgan are going to charge people from now on.

You should also contact your U.S. Representatives and Senators and let them know you don’t want any bank that raises interest rates on its credit cards to receive Federal bailout funds. If the banks have the gall to gouge consumers like this they don’t need taxpayer help.

We have a couple of months before the new interest rates kick in. We can apply pressure to the banks to play fair. If they don’t want to treat their customers well then we don’t have to treat them well. We can demand that the government put restrictions on bailout money and we can move our credit to other banks. Why not switch to Citibank if you’re with Capital One, or switch to Capital One if you’re with Citibank? If they give you a low introductory rate to move your balance, you win, they lose.

That’s fair in my book. The banking industry clearly and obviously doesn’t need taxpayer help if it can so easily cheat existing customers. Raising interest rates, adjusting minimum payments, altering due dates — all these tricks will force even more consumers to fall behind on their bills. Those consumers will have to declare bankruptcy. Just exactly how is that supposed to help the banks become profitable again?

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SF-Fandom is a fan-run moderated Web discussion community devoted to science fiction, fantasy, history, and mythology. Founded in 2001, SF-Fandom is part of the Xenite.Org Network of science fiction and fantasy Web sites.