credit companies get tightened

credit crunching the numbers

I only see one provision that will have some long-term unintended consequences: restricting issuing credit cards to people under 21. That's a good trick to quickly build up your credit if you're under 21, but this is balanced by the tendency of such people to 1) have no income and 2) rack up debts. It will have the effect of slowing the ability of people getting access to credit, and thus make mortgage rates potentially higher in the long run for many (or boost the re-fi markets).

The rest of these provisions seem reasonable and account for a number of bad faith practices.
1) Statements to be mailed out faster. This was a trick being used for people who still used snail mail for their payments (most people). The statement arrives with only a few days left to pay on it. Similarly if a payment was processed slowly, say by intentionally putting the due date on a weekend when it wouldn't have gone through anyway, there shouldn't be a fee assessed. Credit companies have used both of these tricks against their customers for a while.

2) 45 days instead of 15 to change rates. This gives people an extra month to make extra payments at a lower interest rate. Fine with that. There's also an added grace period of an extra month to account for the possibility of someone goofing up once or twice and making a single payment late (or not at all) rather than providing a record of being chronically late and/or missing payments entirely. Gotcha rates, the promotional introductory rate that gets advertised on the envelope rather than the actual long term interest rate that comes sort of prominently in the mice type legalese, would have to last longer and rates generally would be frozen for the first year. I do foresee this may impact the ability of people with poorer credit getting access to credit, but since this sort of method has been used to jack up interest rates on people and cycle them into debt spirals rather than help them build up credit (predatory lending of a sort), I'm not all that worried about it. If poor people cannot get access to credit cards, they have one less source of poverty on one point but one less way out if they're smart about them. This is rare.

3) Rates reduce back to a previously agreed level after a payment on-time period is demonstrated. I have not quite understood why credit companies haven't done this in the past. Or why they've arbitrarily raised rates without a late payment (though there are some goofy reasons, such as a reduced credit score for this).

Now if they can get some rules to apply to bank debit cards with a credit logo on them we're doing good.

Of course, the Senate version has a nice rider attached that has something to do with gun restrictions in national parks. I can see what that has to do with credit cards...