Conservatives Oppose Protecting The Public from Predatory Bank Lending Practices

From Consumers' Union -- April 8, 2010:

The banks love fine print and loopholes. That’s how they managed to hike millions of Americans’ credit card interest rates before a new law went into effect in February clamping down on their abusive tactics.

But that new law can still help customers — in it, Congress told the banks to review those interest rate hikes and bring unfair rates back down for responsible cardholders. Of course, the banks are trying to make sure that the Federal Reserve Board’s regulations don’t really rollback rate increases.

We need your voice now to counter the banks’ efforts! The Senate is preparing to vote on reforming oversight of the banks and Wall Street — send Senators a strong message that credit card rates need to come back down as part of the reform package.

Email your Senators to include strong credit card rate rollback in bank reform. Give customers a fighting chance!

The financial reform bill is our last, best chance to give Americans’ socked with last year's interest rate hikes a legitimate way to get their concerns addressed. Credit card interest rates cover lending risk, but when the banks can borrow money for close to 0%, why are they charging good customers who pay on time upwards of 30%?

The financial reform bill should stop the unbridled greed and dangerous risk-taking on Wall Street that tanked our economy, destroyed home values and retirement accounts, and eliminated millions of jobs. The bill needs to:

Prioritize a strong, independent consumer protection watchdog with no loopholes;
Help reverse credit card rate hikes for responsible cardholders;
Stop taxpayer bailouts of ‘too big to fail’ banks or other big financial companies.

Take a second to email your Senators now! They need to hear from you, not just from the banks!

Wall Street and financal institutions spent nearly $200 million lobbying Washington last year, so we've got our work cut out for us. After you send an email, please forward this to 10 other people so they can lend their voices, too.

And you’ll be hearing from us in the coming weeks on more ways you can help make sure financial reform works for hard-working Americans. Thanks for all you do!