Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (CARD) Quotes

I think that every single company that offers a credit card is reassessing its cost….reassessing what they do and how they do it.

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Marcia Sullivan, director of government relations for Consumer Bankers Association, USA Today.

This bill fundamentally changes the entire business model of credit cards by restricting the ability to price credit for risk. It is a fundamental rule of lending that an increase in risk means that less credit will be available and that the credit that is available will often have a higher interest rate.

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Edward L. Yingling, the chief executive of the American Bankers Association, Washington Post.

[The bill would] have a dramatic impact on the ability of consumers, small businesses, students, and others to get credit at a time when our economy can least afford such constraints.

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American Bankers Association, AP

ABA is very concerned about the direction this legislation is headed and we are concerned over the impact it will have on the ability of consumers, students and small businesses to get credit cards.

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Ken Clayton, senior vice president of card policy at the American Bankers Association, Washington Post.

If you compare what the card industry looked like 20 years ago to how it looks today, you’ll be astonished at how much better a deal consumers are lately getting. And government regulation isn’t what drove the improvement; free-market innovation and competition, did. Twenty years ago, all consumers paid the same interest rate—and it wasn’t low (19.8%).

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Thomas Brown, financial columnist, Bankstocks.com.

The bill would, for instance, prohibit card companies from changing the rates they charge ‘at any time, for any reason.’ Translation: instead of a borrower’s interest rate varying up and down, it will just stay up. Or fees will rise, to offset issuers’ loss of pricing flexibility.

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Thomas Brown, Bankstocks.com.

Dodd’s misbegotten bill would reduce competition and raise costs for the consumer—all so his office can generate press releases that say things like ‘Dodd Fights Card Companies.’ In fact, his fight will end up hurting his own constituents.

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Thomas Brown, Bankstocks.com.

“As an industry leader, Chase does not engage in several practices -- universal default, two-cycle billing and increasing a rate based on a change in a credit score -- addressed by the bill, but we believe the legislation as passed today has the potential of increasing overall costs to consumers, reducing access to credit, and reducing or eliminating low-rate options for consumers.”

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Stephanie Jacobson, first vice president of public affairs for Chase Card Services. CreditCards.com.

Passing legislation like this will discourage lending. This comes at a particularly bad time when consumers and our economy have already had enough stress to deal with. It's not wise policy to create a consumer credit crunch at the same time that our economy is experiencing a commercial credit crunch.

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Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), CreditCards.com.

Legislation likely to result in higher interest rates for consumers is not the answer. [This bill] would broadly constrain the ability of financial institutions to price risk, likely resulting in less access to credit and in higher interest rates for consumers.

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The Bush White House’s statement, CreditCards.com.

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