Never Forget Senate Voting Down Credit Card Rate Caps

The senate of the United States cast their ballots 60-35 to refuse to allow states to cap the amount of interest charged on credit cards. If you didn't think you had the right to walk away from all your credit card debt, you do now. You have that right. The senate of the United States has betrayed the citizens of the United States by not permitting states to cap the interest rates. Rate caps are necessary and a responsibility of any sensible government historically. But if government now says they are not responsible, then you no longer are responsible to pay outrageous rates. It becomes just a business decision and the credit card companies cannot police themselves. Credit card companies now have a license to steal, because usury is stealing.

The government is essentially abdicating the authority to stop credit card companies from stealing in usury. Therefore, only the citizens of the nation can police this injustice by walking away from their credit cards.

In case you didn't know it, the law states that the state of origination of the credit cards, in this case, mostly South Dakota and then Delaware, can set the usury rates. They have no cap because when credit cards were getting started, the state of South Dakota wanted the business. We have seen abuse after abuse by the credit card companies regarding rates. This is now the abuse by the senate, who had a chance to rectify a long surviving wrong upon the citizens of the United States.

You now have the unfettered right to walk away, and indeed you can walk away strategically, with no moral restraint. They don't care about you. Your politicians don't care and will never care about you in this issue. Walk away from all your debt in protest. Always check for the ramifications of hurting your credit score. I am an advocate of protest, but I am not a financial counselor nor am I an attorney. Please listen as I encourage all that we must turn en masse on the credit card companies. The only way to get justice is to walk away because the senate of the United States will never change this law.

While it was likely that many states would not have taken the power to cap rates seriously, the mere fact that they would have been given the opportunity would have at least given the consumers in that state a fighting chance. But the consumers have been served the usury scam, with little likelihood of ever getting it changed. This is just criminal. There are strategies for getting rid of your massive debt.

This battle against the credit card companies can be and should be a peaceful battle. But it can be an effective battle if people will just step up and walk away from the debt. I realize that all cannot participate because of certain jobs or vulnerabilities regarding your credit score. Again, I am not a credit card advisor in any way. I am a protestor and have been so for years now.

My flagship website is www.dontpaycreditcards.com

Another of my websites involved in the battle is: www.bank-abuse.com

I also have Hubpages with links below for further reading. Please visit my site that deals with the New International Order which has unsettled people's pocketbooks and lifestyles. .I hope people would join the movement, which is bigger than me, of strategic defaults. Mostly this has been aimed at ponzi house loans. But it must also be applied to rates for credit cards that are not being watched over by our elected representatives. Shame on you Senate of the United States. Shame on You.

I first saw the article of this vote down on Yahoo.com and I don't believe I had seen comments being entered at a faster pace than this. Readers from Yahoo were FURIOUS. There were so many angry posts that Yahoo changed the title of the article! Are you listening Senate. No, forget it, as I have given up on you utterly corrupt human beings. Praise for the 35 brave senators who voted to allow each state to protect their citizens.

Now people have carte blanche to walk away, if they had a moral issue before. There is no moral reason to pay usury if you don't have to.

The Tea Party Looks Down At Citizens Who Have Been Scammed By Ponzi Loans and Usury

So it will be interesting to see what position the wealthy Tea Party people take on the issue of credit card abuse. They have not been sympathetic in the past. That is why at this point I don't trust them!

For a more complete timeline please see this link:

1. The banks thought up a ponzi loan scheme at Basel 2 in 1997. The central banks allowed off balance sheet banking which led to easy money loans throughout the western world, and to liar loans in the USA.

2. The banks went bust as the portfolio of loans became hard to sell. Investors got smart and refused to buy phony CDO's rated AAA but which were not AAA in quality.

3. The banks required a cash infusion, from Tarp and easy .5 percent loans from the Federal Reserve Central Bank discount window. They then lent and bought treasuries, pushing yields down for savers and they made massive income on the loans. Much of this was leveraged, just like the original bets on the CDO's.

4. The banks continued to raise interest rates and did so even on good credit risk. They were being burned by defaults as people lost jobs and lost the value of their homes thanks to the original ponzi loan bank scam.

So, the banks scammed the average citizen, then got a bailout at his expense, then cut credit to him, and continue to want no fetters on him as to how much interest they charge.

These are all business decisions that the banks made, which were very customer unfriendly. Under these circumstances, and since the government continues to help these banks rather than protect those who voted the elected officials in, there is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a business decision for your household. This decision may adversely affect the banks, but, oh well.

In the Old Testament, usury was the lending with interest. The New Testament is silent about this rule, but it is clear that money changers were looked upon with great disdain. As time progressed, countries came to limit excessive usury, and usury laws limited the amount of interest that could be charged. As economies progressed into prosperity, generally banks were accepted as long as they charged interest that was not excessive. However, from time to time, banks would abuse their trust. That happened on a massive scale in the Great Depression. The problem now is that usury has gotten completely out of control, and the US government has abdicated the responsibility to set any reasonable limits to interest charged.

Excessive interest is stealing regardless of what the government does or does not do to stop it. As greed has entered the system with ponzi liar loans, no down payment loans and the like, even home borrowing has become fraught with danger. The loans, or many of them, were doomed to failure. Excessive interest on credit cards, and the refusal of credit card companies to work with borrowers, doomed the cards to failure. Even borrowers who made double payments got no relief from high interest rates.

So then, while it is difficult to always quantify excessive rates, it is clear that rates that exist over 12-15 percent do not seem to work, and people start defaulting at those rates. It makes you wonder if the banks want the principle paid or if they just want to get as much as they can get as soon as they can get it. Government, by abdicating responsibility to cap rates at reasonable levels, has sold out completely to the international banksters, and we are hostages of that sellout, in so many ways.

This is an unhealthy situation and it pits the failing middle classes against the banksters. This is not a healthy way for leaders to run a country.

Official Description on Senate Website:

Whitehouse Amdt. No. 3746 As Modified Further; To restore to the States the right to protect consumers from usurious lenders.

Call the "Nay" voters and protest. And call the five cowards that abstained. Find your senators here.

Here is the official Senate page and here is the roll call:

Alphabetical by Senator Name

Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Nay
Barrasso (R-WY), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Nay
Bayh (D-IN), Nay
Begich (D-AK), Yea
Bennet (D-CO), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Nay
Bingaman (D-NM), Nay
Bond (R-MO), Nay
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brown (R-MA), Nay
Brownback (R-KS), Nay
Bunning (R-KY), Nay
Burr (R-NC), Nay
Burris (D-IL), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Not Voting
Cantwell (D-WA), Nay
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Nay
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Nay
Coburn (R-OK), Nay
Cochran (R-MS), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Nay
Conrad (D-ND), Nay
Corker (R-TN), Nay
Cornyn (R-TX), Nay
Crapo (R-ID), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Nay
Dorgan (D-ND), Yea
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Nay
Enzi (R-WY), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Yea
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Franken (D-MN), Yea
Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Nay
Grassley (R-IA), Nay
Gregg (R-NH), Nay
Hagan (D-NC), Nay
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Nay
Hutchison (R-TX), Nay
Inhofe (R-OK), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Nay
Isakson (R-GA), Nay
Johanns (R-NE), Nay
Johnson (D-SD), Nay
Kaufman (D-DE), Nay
Kerry (D-MA), Nay
Klobuchar (D-MN), Nay
Kohl (D-WI), Nay
Kyl (R-AZ), Nay
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
LeMieux (R-FL), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Not Voting
Lincoln (D-AR), Nay
Lugar (R-IN), Nay
McCain (R-AZ), Nay
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Nay
Menendez (D-NJ), Not Voting
Merkley (D-OR), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Nay
Murray (D-WA), Nay
Nelson (D-FL), Yea
Nelson (D-NE), Nay
Pryor (D-AR), Nay
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Risch (R-ID), Nay
Roberts (R-KS), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Yea
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Nay
Shaheen (D-NH), Nay
Shelby (R-AL), Nay
Snowe (R-ME), Nay
Specter (D-PA), Not Voting
Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Nay
Thune (R-SD), Nay
Udall (D-CO), Yea
Udall (D-NM), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Nay
Voinovich (R-OH), Nay
Warner (D-VA), Not Voting
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Yea

Amendment Watch