Consumers of credit cards (That's what we consumers do, consume products and services. Credit cards companies offer a service) are now faced with higher interest rates.
(Click here for CBS News video---Sorry, I'm lately having problems embedding videos; have to use links for now.)
Why? Basic supply and demand in the market? No. Natural forces in the market resulting from a flux in consumer spending? No.
At the 30 second mark:"The spike in rates have been caused by the new credit card regulations."
Banks now have to compensate for the inability to offset loss by assessing penalty fees on only those who actually deserve fees, delinquent customers. Now everyone will have to pay higher interest rates.
Even Katie Courac admits this a way of forcing good customers to cover the risk of delinquent customers.
It happens every time: Government interferes in a market quick to demagogue some company, artificially influences the otherwise free mechanism of the market, drives up the costs of goods and services because inefficiencies and unintended consequences are introduced into transactions, and the consumer pays an unnecessarily high cost.
(Just about any economics book in Book Reports covers this repetitive policy.)
Because government decides we cannot read and comprehend the credit card contracts we all have to sign to get a card, and because too many of us are unwilling to accept the terms of the contract we signed and accept responsibility for our personal spending, all of us pay a higher costs.
This paternalism is not fitting for free and responsible people and is an indirect form of redistribution of wealth. It is also one more way to force consumers to pay twice: once as consumers paying artificially high prices and twice as the taxpayers who unwilling fund the paternalistic, wrong-headed, and irresponsible policies of government.
But the credit card companies are the bad guys.
