Consumers should support crackdown on credit abuses

Consumers should support crackdown on credit abuses

EDITOR:

As residents and consumers in the Mahoning Valley we are all painfully aware of the difficulties in making ends meet as the cost of necessary, day-to-day living expenses continues to increase dramatically. We watch as the price of gasoline for our vehicles, utilities and food increases and companies providing these services dig deeper into our pockets. We are also aware of the home foreclosure crisis and the hardships and widespread negative effects it has on our communities, yet we hear very little about another industry whose practices are harming a growing number of individuals and families, and that is the credit card industry. The credit card industry has for years been allowed to engage in business practices that promote a cycle of debt for consumers such as unreasonable fees, penalties, interest and other charges. This cycle of debt has a negative effect on all of our quality of lives by causing financial hardship and increasing demands on our local social service providers.

Fortunately, three federal regulatory agencies — the National Credit Union Administration, the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of Thrift Supervision — have now proposed new rules that would ban many detrimental practices associated with credit card accounts. No longer would hard working people struggling to pay bills be penalized by practices such as allocating payments first to balances with lower interest rates, increased interest rates being applied to existing balances, deceptive offers of “fixed” interest rates that change after you sign up and huge increases in interest rates for being late or missing even one payment. My career has been spent working in the banking and financial services industry and I have seen first-hand the damages and hardships caused by the home foreclosure crisis. I believe very strongly in the importance of these proposed reforms in the credit card industry to protect consumers from a similar situation. While the banking and more specifically the mortgage industry has been targeted as being largely responsible for unfair and predatory lending practices, the credit card industry has been allowed to increase practices that my constituents have complained about and that I have experienced myself.

I strongly urge you to write your local, state and federal elected and other officials asking them to support the reforms being proposed. Also, our state treasurer, Richard Cordray, has been coordinating efforts to make these agencies in Washington, D.C., aware that responsible consumer protections are necessary for the well-being of our communities. You can write his office at 30 E. Broad St., 9th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215. We must make our voices heard to restore fairness to our financial system.

DANIEL R. YEMMA, owner

Capital Financial Solutions, Inc.

Struthers

Thanks for the memories

EDITOR:

I would like to thank the Bush administration for all it has done for the American people over the past eight years.

Thank you so much for the highest energy prices, unemployment, and inflation rates this country has seen in years. Thank you for sending countless American troops overseas to fight a senseless battle that is only getting progressively worse everyday. Thank you for raising the interest rates on my student loan. And thank you for maintaining good public relations with foreign countries, especially those in the Mid-East, upon whom we depend so deeply for crude oil.

It’s too bad that you cannot be elected for another term (or two). Thank you, George Bush ... for nothing.

VINCE WILLIAMS

Girard