Credit Card Issues Fight for Attention After AIG Bonus Payments
Mar 21st, 2009 | By Rob | Category: Credit Cards
The federal government managed to put consumer protection for credit card holders back on their radar screen for a moment this past week despite their unwavering focus on the AIG bonus payments and preparing for the Special Olympics.
President Barack Obama reaffirmed his belief in the need for consumer protection related to credit cards in response to a question at a California town hall meeting this past Wednesday. Earlier, I had wondered about the removal of this portion of his agenda in the transition from his campaign website to the government website. Unfortunately, from what I can gather, it wasn’t a ringing endorsement for new debt protections. In his answer, President Obama said that he “generally” supports a credit card bill of rights. But the few news stories that I can find about the statement don’t go into any more depth on the issue.
Meanwhile, the House Financial Services subcommittee considered the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights. I’ve talked at great length in past posts about the credit card bill of rights and my opinions of it, so I won’t go into it again here. No news story went into any great depth on how the bill will differ from the new credit card rules imposed by the Federal Reserve and set to be implemented starting in July 2010.
The one interesting thing that I saw was that the House is also considering additional overdraft protection for checking accounts. This measure would require a notice when using an ATM or debit card if you are about to incur an overdraft fee. I suspect that this is being considered as part of the bill of rights legislation, though it was unclear from the news article I read.
In other news, Citigroup issued $3 billion in bonds backed by credit card receivables under the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (”TALF”). Reportedly, this is the first sale of debt backed by credit cards under the program, which was announced last fall.
