The rapid developments in the financial sector of our country are having ramifications far beyond only stabilizing our country’s economy. We now have to deal with significant government control and ownership of commercial systems that do not have the protection of the citizens of our country and their rights as their number one objective.
When profits collide with the good of the people sparks will fly.
Yesterday I commented on the possible new role of a federal government that owns banks taking a more national approach to usury laws and moving to protect the populace from avaricious bankers and credit card firms.
My main point was that having the government (now that they will own the banks and have controlling interest on the banks’ boards of directors) charging US citizens in the range of 30 percent interest on debt is a conflict between protecting the people and exploiting them.
Many comments focused on the injustice of the punitive nature of the interest changes. But I feel there is a larger problem: As the national government takes over these institutions, there should be a national usury law. Banks and credit card issuers should come under new controls that limit their ability to fleece the common man.
In a private enterprise, it’s every man for himself. With the government, the objective is to serve the people. This will be a giant difference in objectives to overcome.
Another part of the banking takeover is the control of the massive credit reporting databases. Lawmakers and privacy advocates have worked overtime to keep the government from collecting too much information about US citizens. Now, the federal government will own, in some way, shape or form, these credit reporting databases and have unfettered access to all of this data.
There was a uproar when the Bush administration strongarmed access to credit card transactions following 9/11. Within the intelligence communities, this access to credit card transactions was considered one of the biggest coups in the fight against terror.
Now the federal government, through ownership of the banking institutions, has absolutely clear claim to peruse this data, absent new rulings that haven’t even begun to be considered.
Our rapid dive into the nationalization of banking will have far reaching implications.
These two small areas, usury and access to credit card transactions and reports, are only the tip of the iceberg.
The fingers of Uncle Sam have never had this ability to reach so far into our private lives.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
