Consumers Get a Break on Credit Cards - Finally

First the bad news: these rules don’t take effect until July, 2010 ... barring the deceptive and punitive practices of many credit card issuers. The policy statement ... thirty days late on a payment. In that case, credit card issuers can still increase your interest rate [more...]

Date: 2008-12-19 01:43:31

Blog posts (8) | No video
 

45% Less Credit in Americans’ Wallets

Meredith Whitney, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. is predicting that credit card issuers may cut as much as $2 trillion worth of available credit ... of accounts, cutting credit lines and raising interest rates are just some of the moves credit card [more...]

Date: 2008-12-02 13:03:38

Record Credit Card Defaults Signals a Weaker Recovery

According to reports from Moody’s ( MCO ) Investors Service, credit card delinquencies surged to record levels in August.  In the first increase of charge-off rates since the rally began in March, credit card issuers wrote off 11.49% of uncollectible consumer debt compared to 10.52% in July.  Also loans more than 30-days past due also rose to 5.8%.  Moody’s report also suggests that charge off rates are not likely to peak until mid-2010, as unemployment continues to strain many consumers budgets. [more...]

Date: 2009-09-24 14:40:21

Fed decided to Institute Curbs On Issuers of Credit Cards

On Tuesday rules have been proposed by the Federal Reserve to end banks’ ability to apply credit card payments to balances having lowest interest rates first, implementing legislation Congress passed in May. The Fed also proposed that before charging fees for transactions that exceed credit limits creditors obtain consumers’ consent. The Fed said in a statement that restrictions on lending to people under the age of 21 and subprime credit card fees were also included. [more...]

Date: 2009-09-30 12:56:49

Bond issuer upgrades look set to increase

Bond issuers poised for a credit-rating upgrade have exceeded the 12-month average for the first time in two years, according to Standard & Poor's in a report that signals improvements in the global economy.The ratings agency said 174 global iss ... [more...]

Date: 2009-09-29 17:48:20

Credit Card Laws and Court Rulings–Have They Helped Consumers?

This is a guest post by Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com . Congress passed the Credit CARD Act in May but gave issuers and banks almost one year to implement the major provisions of the bill. Since then, issuers did exactly what they threatened to do–raise rates and fees on a broad group of cardholders. Consumers and elected officials are not happy about this, and members of Congress plan to introduce a bill to accelerate the effective date of the bill from February 22, 2010 to December 1, 2009. [more...]

Date: 2009-09-25 19:18:38

Failure to Govern

From Mina Kimes at Fortune: Experts are divided over whether the municipal default rate, which is historically just 0 ... by much, but he argues that the credit stress facing issuers is an overriding concern to investors ... , according to data from Thomson Reuters… The market for municipal credit protection has “quite literally [more...]

Date: 2009-01-09 17:00:30

Investors, Issuers Howl Over Plans to Change Asset Backed Securities Ratings (No Sympathy Here)

Do you remember the Ford Pinto? The 1970s car had a nasty tendency to explode into flames in rear end collisions ... (in terms of credit exposure) between ABS and other rated instruments. In case you have any doubts ... are dynamic, and companies can and do take action to forestall credit downgrades (particularly below [more...]

Date: 2008-06-11 07:21:40

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