via ctx3

"... On NPR this morning I was listening to his interview with Diane Rehm and he was discussing his bankruptcy bill that is being debated in the House. He was drawing a comparison between credit card companies and alcoholic drink companies. His line of comparison was that we do not blame the company that made the alcohol when a person is weak and becomes an alcoholic while a credit card company can get blamed for the misuse of credit when a person is weak and uses their credit card too much."

Memo to Grassler, in 1956 the American Medical Association declares alcoholism an illness. In Physician's News Digest they talk about handling that disease. If Sen.Grassely draws the analogy of credit card debt to alcoholism, then aren't these people suffering from a disease? Shouldn't they be treated like people with an illness, and not a weakness? I can't go a day without getting a credit card offer in the mail with a huge credit line, low interest rate, and those cute, preprinted checks with my name plastered across them. (a huge cause of identity theft) Isn't that like sending an alocholic a bottle of hooch in the mail every day and expect that person not to drink it? Of course this bill does not address the credit card companies culpability in credit card abuse.

Our overall concern is that this isn't a balanced bill," said Travis Plunkett, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consumer research and advocacy group. "There isn't a single curb on abusive lending practices by credit card companies in these bills."