Armed with the new Bankruptcy law in hand, the credit card companies decided it was time to recoup some of their money.
A handful of major credit card companies decided to raise the minimum payment amount from 2% to 4%, essentially doubling Americans credit card payment amounts.
The article tries to play this off as a good thing, showing how paying more than 2% a month pays the debt off faster and incurs less in interest charges. It glosses over how this will affect most Americans already suffering from the poor economy.
What the article fails to note is the timing. This follows immediately on the heels of the passage of the new bankruptcy law that greatly benefits the credit card companies by making it much more difficult to erase credit card debt.
Does anyone actually believe that the credit card companies would have tried this prior to the law being passed? Knowing that Americans were already squeezed by the poor economy, I'm sure they were aware that any attempt to raise payments or fees would've resulted in millions of dollars lost on default. With the new bankruptcy law in hand, they're now able to go and collect all of that money they so easily passed out. All they need now is someone to break some legs and they could be your local loan shark.
I wonder how many of the Democratic Senators who voted for this legislation knew this was coming. I'm sure that if Bank of America or Citi Bank stood on the floor of the Senate and said "as soon as you pass this legislation, we're going double credit card payments" this law would've never passed. Of course, the Republicans probably knew all along.