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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TheBusDriver who wrote (26883)	2/21/2005 4:42:56 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110194

Just from the current CITIBANK card statement: the annual percentage rate on your account may increase due to one of the following reasons stated in your card agreement withut: if you fail to make a payment to US OR ANY OTHER CREDITOR when due, you exceed your credit line or you make a payment to us that is not honored by your bank..... This is the fine print now buried in ALL credit cards CC

To: TheBusDriver who wrote (26883)	2/21/2005 5:10:28 PM
From: benwood	Respond to of 110194

I put fraud alerts on all three bureaus recently and noticed (on my free reports that came a few days later :-) )that there were many routine checks in the past year. If you get a glitch on your report, it will be discovered quickly and you will be pounded into the sand, if you happen to be one of the Patriotic Americans carrying huge balances anyway. There will be people who have their identity stolen that will end up paying those 25%+ rates because of somebody else's criminal behavior. I'm in favor of a system where I have to be called before ANY credit request is granted, but understandably, Equifax and the other crooks are against this because it would mean a quick end to the enormous fees they collect from identity theft victims. That's right, they make a lot of money off of identity theft -- people who are burned or who are afraid of getting burned can sign up for "protection" to the tune of $100 per year or so and also who pay for numerous credit reports to track down problems. With a complete lock on your credit, identity theft is nearly impossible; but the three agencies would lose out on so much money that it would be crying shame to deprive them, don'tcha think? They will do this for you (a "credit freeze") if and only if your state passes a law requiring them to do so. I believe only California has this provision, but perhaps Texas or NM recently added this protection for it's citizens. If you are from another state, they simply will not do so.