79.9% Credit Card interest. How do you stop a society of Predators?

[walldude]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ivNif4cIHe3MY4MLgc4dXouYoGmgD9CLC1P80

First Premier targets people with bad credit who likely can't get approved for cards elsewhere. It's a group that tends to lean heavily on credit too, meaning they'll likely incur the steep financing charges.

This is unbelievable. To get around new regulations in the Credit Card industry this bank has a new card for poor people, people with bad credit, people who they know they have cornered. People who will probably use this card for things like food and gas. It;s $300 limit so you aren't going to be making any major purchases with it and the interest rate is an astounding 79.9%. And you know, this is a test to see if they can get away with it.

Politicians, Corporations, Religions, those are the big 3. They run this show. And they all have one thing in common. They love to prey on the weak, the poor, the sick and the destitute. We have become a society of predators and prey. This new credit card rate was just the icing on a cake I have been trying to figure out how to eat for awhile now.

The feelings of being powerless are horrible. To have to watch helplessly as we are raped, pillaged and beaten down into submission. And if you are a compassionate and empathetic person it's even worse because you see all this suffering and there is nothing you can really do, this machine is so big and so corrupt it will take a lifetime to defeat it. And even then...

So I spent the day reading and listening to music. And I had kind of an epiphany. Two songs came up in my rotation back to back. One was Led Zeps Immigrant Song and the other was Roger Waters Each Small Candle.

The Zep song gave me my weapon for this fight. The Hammer Of The Gods.

The Waters song gave me my job. In case you don't know this song the lyrics are a poem written by a political prisoner who was eventually tortured to death. He closes by saying that Each Small Candle Lights A Corner Of The Dark. And that my friends is my job. I hope you make it yours too. If we each continue to light our small corner eventually the light will flood the dark and we can climb out of this nightmare and build a society that lives for life, love, passion and joy, instead of for greed and wealth and power. So pick up an instrument, a paint brush, a pen, or a hammer and create something out of nothing. While they are busy destroying keep building. Create beauty where there is none bring life and love and joy to your small corner of the dark.

Oh and if you don't know what the Hammer of the Gods is well it's open to interpretation, but in this context it meant this:

[Xipe Totec]

1. Killing the prey starves the predator n/t

[walldude]

2. Well when I examined my options Death was not on the list

so I think I'll stick to playing the guitar. :)

[Xipe Totec]

3. Good, good.

Not being the prey is the first step to survival...

:evilgrin:

[Turbineguy]

4. Maybe it's an intelligence test

or a credit card program targeting Teabaggers.

Of course they can't come out and say that.

[walldude]

5. Crappy self-indulgent kick.

[Union Yes]

6. Revolution.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. Offer a better alternative.

Consider the following.

:-Taking out credit at 79.9% interest is a really unpleasant thing to have to do.
:-So far as I'm aware, no-one is being coerced into doing so by the bank*.
:-The bank figures that they can make a profit from *offering* people people the opportunity to do so.
:-This is only a viable strategy if there are a significant number of people out there for whom the alternative - not being able to get any credit - is even worse.
:-Simply making it illegal to offer credit on these terms is unlikely to lead to credit being offered to such people on better terms.
:-This means that it's probable effect will be to force them to take an option they consider to be even worse.
:-Therefore, what needs to be tackled is *not* the fact that there is credit on terms like this being offered, but the fact that there are significant numbers of people who need it.

The solution is *not* to ban business practices like this, it's to permit them, tax them, and use the revenue to alleviate poverty so that there are fewer people (ideally, no-one at all) for whom they are the least worst option.

*It's worth noting that over-aggressive or misleading marketing of financial products to people who would be better off without them is a recognised and moderately widespread phenomenon; there are various laws against it but people still do it. All this article alleges is that the bank in question is offering extortionate credit, though, not that it's mis-selling it.