February 11, 2009

Limit and subsidize credit card rates

I heard Geithner in the Congress and I read Martin Wolf’s “Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks” February 11 and it is clear that they and most of us have entered into a quite unproductive phase of the debate, where we are all threading muddy waters not getting anywhere.

We should all take a break, from discussing solely about banks, and discuss those other participants of the economy we know as the consumers.

The US consumers face incredibly and unexplainably high rates on their credit cards, like 17% if in current status and 26% if in default.

Why does not the US government not limit those rates to 4 and 6% respectively and as an incentive offer to pay the creditor a 3% compensation on any balance financed over the next year? That would only cost a meagre 30 billion dollars per trillion of credit card debt.

Doing that would put real money in the pockets of the real consumers and simultaneous work at solving the next wave of toxic assets soon to hit the markets.

After such fresh air we might take up our current discussion with new energies.