Bill to limit credit cark rates

Bernie Sanders deserves your support


Sanders Press release Loan Sharks in Three-Piece Suits:

Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce legislation this week to cap interest rates charged by credit card companies that now slap consumers with rates of up to 30 percent. "This is money that comes right out of their hides and it hurts," Sanders told The Burlington Free Press. His legislation would impose 15 percent interest rate ceiling. It also would limit fees. “We are going to introduce a national usury law which will prohibit any financial institution from charging these outrageous rates,” he told Thom Hartmann’s nationally-syndicated radio show. “These loan sharks wear three-piece suits, but they’re not much different than those guys who break people’s knee caps.”

At the same time that banks are receiving the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history and at the same time that the Federal Reserve has lowered short-term interest rates that banks pay to near zero percent, the same banks are charging consumers outrageous fees and sky-high interest rates on credit cards and other loans.

Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and American Express recently notified customers that their interest rates are going up, in some cases to 30 percent, if a single payment is missed. They also are jacking-up interest rates on consumers who pay their bills on time and never go over their credit card limit.