No mercy

When my credit card bill arrived, I accidentally saw some of the fine print, which I never examine because I do not run up charges on the damn thing—which makes me, in banker parlance, a ‘deadbeat’.

Seriously—if you don’t let them charge you interest on an unpaid balance, you’re getting a free ride in their bizarro world. This came out earlier in the year during the congressional hearings on credit card abuse, but the full significance of this mindset escaped general notice. The basic idea being that you get in hock to them, allow them to attach suction cups to your income at various key points and breathe deeply while they accumulate riches.

Anyway, there is a line at the end that reads: ‘Annual Percentage Rate for this billing period: 217.80%’. I am not making this up.

The explanation for this usury is that the total includes ‘periodic rate finance charges and transaction fee finance charges’, allowing them collect more than the legal (and still usurious) rate of 8.99% or 20.99% on cash advances. (Don’t you love the .99 part?)

I recently used my ATM card at an airport and was startled to find in the monthly bill a $10 charge for the privilege of obtaining $80. That would be a 12.5% charge for one day—I wonder how that would compound multiplied times 365.

This is the modern version of the company store to which, in the Tennessee Ernie Ford version, you owed your soul and became ‘another day older and deeper in debt’.

No doubt we will have plenty of leisure time in the next few years as the economy roils around on the ocean floor to discuss regulations and safeguards and whatnot, but there is a larger question about how the entire system, both in the mechanics of household finance and in the concepts peddled to us to sustain it, conspired to create the massive debt slavery that eventually brought down the whole house.

For my part, I plan to take a modest step by telephoning the representatives of (now collapsed—isn’t that sad?) Wachovia Bank and telling them I need the $10 charge removed. If not, I will shift my accounts elsewhere. I’ll post the results here.