Support Credit Card Reform!

from Consumers Union:

Monday was a sobering day. The stock market sinks. Banks verge on collapse. 401ks shrivel. Fannie, Freddie, Bear Stearns and now the insurance industry get bailouts. Could it possibly get worse?

Yes -- without change, big banks losing money on Wall Street could try to squeeze you to recoup their profits. A quick credit card rate increase here, a new fee there, might be good for them, but creates crisis for you.

Congress will vote in the next few days to head-off a credit crunch aimed at you by cracking down on abusive credit card company tactics.

DO SOMETHING! Tell your House members to vote for the credit card reform bill now!

About 50 million American households carry an average $17,000 in credit card debt. This bill would stop unjustified interest rate hikes on that debt.

The bill also would stop the companies’ unfair practice of applying your payments to low-interest balances first leaving the high-interest debt to compound and bury more of us in debt.

Paying off credit card debt should be fair to everyone, not just a way to squeeze more money out of you. But the banking lobby continues their campaign to stall these reforms.

Only days remain for Congress to pass this bill before they break for the year. Don’t let them walk away without heading off a new crisis that would further erode your financial security.