Stopping abuse

Kevin Drum has a useful primer that is helpful in understanding what's really behind the bankruptcy bill that's nearing passage. He goes through the highlights of which amendments have been rejected and which loopholes have, curiously enough, gone unchecked, and he comes to this conclusion:

Bottom line: you don't need to understand all the intricacies of bankruptcy law to know what to think of this bill. Through their actions, its sponsors have made it abundantly plain that abuse of the system isn't their real aim: protection of major campaign contributors is. The poor get shafted, the very real crisis of medical bankruptcy is ignored, the rich are allowed loopholes that let them off the hook, and credit card companies can continue on their merry way knowing they won't have to pay the price for their own folly.

Really, if there was truth in naming for bills in congress, this one would be called The Predatory Lender Protection Act.

For more than two years, special-education teacher Fatemeh Hosseini worked a second job to keep up with the $2,000 in monthly payments she collectively sent to five banks to try to pay $25,000 in credit card debt.

Even though she had not used the cards to buy anything more, her debt had nearly doubled to $49,574 by the time the Sunnyvale, Calif., resident filed for bankruptcy last June. That is because Hosseini's payments sometimes were tardy, triggering late fees ranging from $25 to $50 and doubling interest rates to nearly 30 percent. When the additional costs pushed her balance over her credit limit, the credit card companies added more penalties.