Prometheus 6

I used to practice debtors' bankruptcy law, and We've been through disability and other misfortunes beyond our control.

After these misfortunes destroyed our credit, Insteaad of one card with improved limits, Capital One conned my severely ill wife int taking our four (4) separate cards with setup, monthly, and other fees on top of waterfront loan shark interest rates, which are actually compounded if you don't and obviously can't pay in full every month though that is never explained. She received an average of three (3) more offers from other predatory card issuers per day for a long time, after defaulting on Capital One's cards, too, for years until I finally got sick of this, after reviewing those of the offers that were printed in type big enough for either of us to read--many were not0--and we added ehr to the list requesting no more unsolicited credit card offers. The credit card companies, from whom the card issuers mine the names of vulnerable victims for these offers, are probably suffering from that cut-off, too.

I defy most lawyers, much less most consumers bombarded with these "sub-prime," "fresh start," predatory offers, including people who have just filed for bankruptcy protection, to comprehend the language of these offers and contracts. If, as they know, you still owe on an old credit card account, the vaguely worded "universal default" provisions in these offers means you are alrfeady in default when you receive the new card. They can raise the already high interest rates and fees still higher for reasons that include a rapacious desire for even more money, and, since you can't afford to pay off the card, there is nothing the average consuemr can do to avoid these. They can throw you into default by reducing your credit limit even if you make payments on time. How many consumers realize that it would take them over thirty years, at hugh costs in interest and fees, to pay off their balances if they pay the amount called for on their bills?

There is a massive amouint of this debt out there, carried on these real and credit card banks' financial statements as though it represented real assets, that no sane banker would have extended as credit across a desk under the standards we were taught in economics and in banking sources, A lawyer and director of a small bank holding company told me of being pressured to take out a $50,000.00 limit card he didn't need and which no sane banker would have extended, atwhat worked out to be a rate well above what he could borrow for across a desk. Even with the outrageous, bought and paid for 2004 bankruptcy "reform" law, much of this could never be collected by elgal or evel illegal means, but it papered over the fact that these apper assets on their books are worthless for awhile longer. .

Legal colletion of ll of this debt is barred by the applicabler Texas four year statute of limitations, but, even after that, as explianed on MSN, these time-barred debts are bought and sold for pennies on the dollar to other entities who hope to use cruel psychological rpessures to collect them, forcing us to buy and pay for Calelr ID, Privacy Guard, etc., to protect her from harm from this abuse. I have had clients refererred to me for bankrujptcy etc. by psychiatrists, mental hospitals, emergency medical technicians, ertc. after suicide attempts. Unfair and genrally illegal collection tactics have included threats to seize and harm a desperately ill lady's cat, her only asset, after they eralized that she had bought onlhy psych emergency room and medical services and cat food on the unsoliciged card, bvut you can't find out the identities of the collectors and collection agencies, and, since they paid off Congress andf wrote the laws, there is no pratical lelga remedy for this abuse.

I can't find out how they do this much of the time, though some accounts show phantom small payments and credits to try to revive these barred debts, but, in the corse of trading these around between these shark buyers, they quite regularly evade the limits on their being reportd on credit reports after a given time under the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act andf Fair Credit Reporting Act. One client could not b uy a home because debts to Citi credit cards which he had voluntarily paid off over seven years earlier were somehow still on his credit report.

Ironically, I had previoiusly done sone credit card collection and served briefly as general counsel to a downtown Dallas bank, and credit reporting inaccuacies that cost lenders eal money were also rampant.

One problem is that, in Texas and some other states, while adopting what were represented as non-substantive codifications of existing law, they set up our statutes of limitations so that they typically bar only collection through the legal system, and not by "self-help" including telephone harassment that turns into a psychological battering ram against the vulnerable and desperate, contrary to the better rule, anounced by Oliverr Wendell Holmes, Jr., when he was Chief Justice of teh Massachaussetts Supreme Court before moving to the U. S. Supreme Court, that if a crediitor was barred from repossessing ollateral or collecting a debt by legal means, he was likewise barred by the statute of limitations from doing or trying to do so by his own hand or other extra-judicail, or extra-legal, means. .

...like Rep. Albert Wynn of Maryland and 9 other kneegrow members of the Congressional Black Caucus supported have actually turned our federal bankruptcy courts and U.S. Attorneys into debt collectors for these corporations.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish..."