Senate on record favoring usury

"He who has the gold makes the rules."

The Golden Rule is part of almost every religion known to man, including that non-religion known as secular humanism.

Yet we go so far out of our way in this country to show no religious preference that we can't even get that one right. It's pretty obvious when you look at public policy in almost every area that we live more by the satirical quote above than we do by any law of reciprocity.

Think about this. The cost of money to banks right now is just about as low as it can go. If you figure in the various federal bailouts, it's actually below zero. The government is paying banks to take its money.

Yet when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the senate's only avowed Socialist, tried to add a provision to the credit card bill to limit interest rates to 15 percent, only 32 other senators voted with him. The other said they were concerned that limiting the amount banks could charge would cause them to be more restrictive in the credit they offer.

Well, excuse me, but maybe the problem is that they haven't been restrictive enough.

When I came of age in the '70s, you had to have good credit to get a credit card. You sort of worked your way up, maybe starting with a gas card or a department-store card and showing you could make payments on time. Then, after a while, you could apply for a Master Charge (that's what it was called then) or a BankAmericard (the old name for Visa).

You started with a low credit limit and get it raised as you proved your ability to handle it. I think my first bank card had a limit of $200.

Nobody had the right to have credit. You had to earn it.

As of about three weeks from now, I'll be out of the credit-card business. I have a small balance still to pay on the cards I have in my wallet, which between them offer me $52,000 in EZ credit. Once I'm done I'll close two of the accounts and keep one card for emergencies.

It just isn't worth it to use them. We had a balance of $19.95 on one of our cards last month. I sent in a check to pay it in full, but it was received a day after the due date. We were charged $35 for a late fee on a balance of $19.95.

It's ridiculous. Even in the '70s, before Congress allowed credit card companies to charge whatever the state in which they were headquartered allowed. South Dakota and Delaware repealed their usury laws, and most of the companies moved there. That's why you see rates of 25 percent, 30 percent or even more in some instances.

Sanders is one of the few people to call this what it really is -- usury, which is defined as an unconscionable or exorbitant rate of interest for a loan.

Now the banks will tell you that no one is forced to use credit cards. In fact, no one is forced to borrow money from them. Let's be real, though. Do they expect people who don't have enough money to pay their rent, or to buy groceries, or to pay medical bills, to just go and live in a cardboard box?

Maybe they do.

Maybe all this is about Social Darwinism. Maybe it's just the survival of the fittest. The problem with that is that we don't come into the game at the beginning. Most of us come into a one-mile run with other people already halfway through the course because of advantages their parents or their grandparents gave them.

There's another thing about saying people don't have to use credit cards.

Even for voluntary purposes, it can be pretty damned hard to resist when 80 percent of the advertising out there is aimed at separating you from your money for all these things you just must have.

Interestingly enough, most major religions speak against usury. In the Bible, it's "thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother." (Deut. 23:19). The Koran is even more forceful: "God condemns usury." It goes on to say that "those who charge usury are in the same position as those controlled by the devil's influence."

It's a shame we have to wait to the next world for the usurers to get what's coming to them. At least that's what the Senate says.