Credit Card, Foreclosure Wrongs Require Organized Opposition

Reprinted from Brooklyn Daily Eagle

By Raanan Geberer

During the weekend, I happened to see Suze Orman’s well-known financial advice program. The the guest was Ann Minch, who has gotten more than 100,000 hits on her YouTube post describing her one-woman “credit card revolt.”

It seems that the Bank of America, where she had her credit card, suddenly and arbitrarily raised her interest rate from 17 percent to 30 percent. Perhaps the bank had to make up money it lost in bad investments, so it decided to roll the expense onto its credit-card customers — I don’t know. But Ms. Minch, a California resident, was so incensed that she decided to make a video announcing to the whole world that she wasn’t paying her credit-card bill, telling everybody why. “I know it’ll be bad for my credit rating,” she said, “but the banks aren’t lending anyway, so what difference does it make?”

This strategy worked. Soon, Bank of America called and offered to lower her interest rate. Suze Orman congratulated her about this on the show.

As I see it, this development is similar to the spontaneous, unorganized protests that sprang up during the early 1930s at the very beginning of the Great Depression — and is symbolic of the fact that we may be entering such a period now.

At that time, for example, a group of farmers armed with shotguns might show up at a fellow farmer’s place to prevent the county sheriff from foreclosing on the place. Similarly, in an urban setting, neighbors might have gathered in front of an apartment house to prevent the marshal from evicting one of their neighbors. While it’s true that radical groups soon got involved in these types of protests, they were merely following and trying to exploit the popular mood — the discontent was already there.

At any rate, actions like this, although they’re important, are very limited in effectiveness and are only “step one.” Ann Minch is only one person. What’s needed are well-thought-out strategies.

If people are really worried about high credit-card rates, every one of them should deluge their Congressperson, their Senator and even the White House with e-mails and phone calls. They should write letters to newspapers, phone in to call-in shows, post on Internet bulletin boards, hold press conference, stage large protest rallies.

At that point, and only at that point, will the “powers that be” start to really take them seriously. Issues like high credit-card rates are important, but to even get to first base, those who wish to change things have to learn how to play the game.