The new hullabaloo in blog-land over the bankrupcy bill that just passed the Senate seems to me like much ado about nothing. The Washinton Post article I just linked lists three main provisions of the bill:
1. Requires credit cards to inform customers of how long it will take to pay off their balances by paying the minimum. The seemingly all-powerful credit industry fought this, to no avail.
2. Allows judges to further penalize the compensation of CEO's of bankrupting corporations. Other industry groups also fought this one, and ended up having to eat it, anyway.
3. Requires some borrowers to file under Chapter 13, rather than Chapter 7 bankruptcy, thus requiring them to actually pay off a portion of the debt owed.
I can feel the fury building up in you even now. Why, those BASTARDS!! To actually expect that some of the money they lend be returned to them! Why it's so horrific, we almost dare not speak its name! In fact, the blogosphere largely hasn't spoken its name, because this is the first analysis of the provisions of the bill I've actually read. And in the WaPo, no less. Admittedly, I've only looked in a few places. But Instapundit has only been denouncing the bill in general, not in specific, this guy is likewise more against the credit card industry than, it seems, the bill itself.
I'm not arguing from a position of screw-the-little-proles, either. I've been up to my eyeballs in C.C. debt, on more than one occasion. I am not, however, about to blame the C.C companies for that. The mere fact of offering "pre-approved" credit does not compell anyone to a) accept the offer, b) use the credit, or c) incompetently arrange one's budget so that it may not be paid off. In a free society, we freely enter contracts and are responsible for fulfilling them. I don't have a problem with people becoming more aware of that.
I've sent an email to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, asking him to explain his position more fully. I hope to hear from him soon. If not, well...there's no contract, is there...?
UPDATE: No word from Glenn. But Eugene Volokh responded to my geek eruption regarding this post with aplomb, which suggests that I might consider getting out more.
No comments:
Post a Comment