Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2008

More from my Representative Carolyn Maloney's RSS feed. She's introduced a bill to help credit card holders -- the first principle it's based on is "Issuers Should Issue Credit Cards on Terms that the Individual Can Repay." It's hard to understand why the issuers couldn't come up with that rule on their own, until you realize credit card accounts were being securitized just like mortgages.

Now, I like people. Just, really, in general. And, a lot of the pleasure I take in careful enforced regulation is in its reduction of human suffering. But, I do appreciate the odd ancillary good effect on our financial markets. These sound like they'll be good for that, too.

The Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights:

-Protects cardholders against arbitrary interest rate increases
-Prevents cardholders who pay on time from being unfairly penalized
-Protects cardholders from due date gimmicks
-Shields cardholders from misleading terms
-Empowers cardholders to set limits on their credit
-Requires card companies to fairly credit and allocate payments
-Prohibits card companies from imposing excessive fees on cardholders
-Prevents card companies from giving subprime credit cards to people who can’t afford them
-Requires Congress to provide better oversight of the credit card industry
-Contains NO rate caps, fee setting, or price controls

Thanks, Representative Maloney!