antiquary

Credit Card Catastrophe: Congress Can't Help

It's pretty basic that the foolishness of some is wealth itself to the wise. There's nothing wrong with profiting from one's own wisdom. But it's deeply immoral to go out of one's way to evoke foolishness for one's own profit. Some idiots might call me a socialist, but capitalism and a sense of morality are in no way mutually exclusive.

This is in part Congress's fault, for not having acted to overturn the Supreme Court decision Marquette National Bank (1978) which took financial regulation, including usury laws, away from the states when dealing with federally chartered banks, which-- surprise!-- all the credit card companies then rushed to form.