If You Pay Your Bills You’re A Sucker: Big Banks Lobby Congress For Credit Card Debt Bailout

• November 2, 2008

Why pay off your debts when you can just sit around and wait for the government to do it?

WASHINGTON – With defaults on credit card debt spiraling amid a global financial downturn, banks already reeling from the mortgage crisis are losing billions more from unpaid credit card bills.
Big banks have formed an unusual alliance with consumer advocates to urge the government to allow huge portions of credit card debt to be forgiven, a turnabout from recent years when the banking industry lobbied strenuously to make it harder for consumers to erase their credit card debts in bankruptcy.
The new pilot program — which the banks hope will become permanent — could involve as many as 50,000 people struggling with credit card debt. On an individual basis, the amount of debt to be forgiven would rise according to the severity of the borrower’s financial situation, up to a maximum of 40 percent.

Just recently I paid off a big chunk of credit card debt that had been hanging over my head from my young and stupid days. Over the last several years, as my wife and I worked to put ourselves into a position to be able to pay it off, we went without a lot. Our television is over a decade old. Outside of a bed that was a wedding gift, we don’t have a stick of new furniture. We didn’t take vacations. We didn’t buy new cars. Outside of an occasional night out for dinner, and the occasional purchase of gifts for one another and our children, we didn’t really spend money on anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.
And now our debt is paid off. The only debt we have is a home mortgage.
I’m scratching my head as to why we worked so hard all those years, why we scrimped an saved, when we could have just waited until the government bailed us out.
I guess being a responsible citizen just doesn’t pay any more, because you can bet some of the taxes my wife and I pay out of our personal prosperity will go to bailout people who don’t give a fig about paying their bills.

Tags: Domestic Issues, Politics

http://www.willisms.com/ Zsa Zsa

They shouldn’t have paid themselves with the bailout money.
http://www.cruiseanswers.co.uk/ Frank

I’m scratching my head as to why we worked so hard all those years, why we scrimped an saved, when we could have just waited until the government bailed us out.
David

Just recently I paid off a big chunk of credit card debt that had been hanging over my head from my young and stupid days. Over the last several years, as my wife and I worked to put ourselves into a position to be able to pay it off, we went without a lot. Our television is over a decade old. Outside of a bed that was a wedding gift, we don’t have a stick of new furniture. We didn’t take vacations. We didn’t buy new cars. Outside of an occasional night out for dinner, and the occasional purchase of gifts for one another and our children, we didn’t really spend money on anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.

That makes you part of the problem !
You and I pay our bills and for some stupid reason the banks want the minorities to do the same thing
Imagine that
Hussein Obama will fix that tho
Jackass Jimmy

Congratz, Rob… that’s a GREAT position to be in for your future! Now, you won’t need to make enough money to be in the source wealthband that will fund the coming socialist shitstorm… you can not only remain below that, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of not paying out tons of interest that your debt generated. If you maintain your responsibility, you’ll do well from now on.

If only so many more people could be as responsible… maybe we wouldn’t need bailouts or idolize presidential candidates based on their platform of socialism.
Neiman

I heard the Auto Industry is putting together a bail out package for their business, what do you want to bet that since they are heavily union that they get the money?
WOOFX

The ordinary citizen must â€˜understand’ that it is impossible to make up the shortfall in social security, but that it is imperative to stuff untold billions into the banks’ financial hole? We must sombrely accept that no one imagines any longer that it’s possible to nationalise a factory hounded by competition, a factory employing thousands of workers, but that it is obvious to do so for a bank made penniless by speculation?

badiou on the financial crisis
WOOFX

This is pretty much the unwritten program advertised on TV by all those reduce your credit card debt “counselors”.
the CC companies will settle for 1/2 if you don’t declare bankruptcy.

Such a deal.

Borrowers would be able to defer payment of income taxes they owe on the forgiven part of the debt until after the remainder was paid off. The lenders could wait until then to book their loss on the forgiven debt.

Wonder what it would cost to pay off every individual citizens CC bill.
Might be less than the trillion or so we’ve thrown to the
financial sector. All that $$$ would go to the banks, so everybody except people who foolishly paid their bills would be happy.
WOOFX

Everybody who’s anybody is sitting
on the steps of the Treasury
petitioning for free money.

SayAnythingBlog.com

If You Pay Your Bills You’re A Sucker: Big Banks Lobby Congress For Credit Card Debt Bailout

Create a SAB Readerblog

Recent Comments