When Will They Ever Learn?
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- April
- 28
The country’s economy is collapsing under a crushing load of debt, but that hasn’t stopped the credit-card industry from trying to trap more consumers in the revolving door of financial servitude.
For some time, ever since the dissolution of the subprime mortgage market, Lehman Brothers, etc., my daily load of junk mail has been completely free of credit card enticements. I figured that the rise of unemployment and the new-found religion of saving had killed the spirit of instant gratification that was aided and abetted by easy access to plastic.
But no. I was wrong. Just the other day, I received an application for a Visa Black Card, which is Visa’s competitive answer to the American Express Black Card. This is the pitch: Only one percent of U.S. residents can get one of these cards for annual fee of $495. The implicit message is that any holder of the Black Card is in the minority circle of winners.
The other 99 percent? Losers, all of them.
And the Black Card isn’t even plastic like the cards the losers are forced to carry around. Indeed the advertisement declares that the Black Card “is not another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it is the ultimate buying tool.”
The annual percentage rate is 13.24 percent. The word “variable” is added in small print. That means that at any time, they’ll jack the rate up to the usual loan-shark levels.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 5:37 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
So, ...does that mean you are “rich”....
and want to tell us ?
I thought 13.24 percent was loansharking.