LETTER: Price controls on credit cards
Your Monday editorial against the federal government capping credit card interest at 10 percent was spot on. Having a credit card to buy whatever you want from whoever you want whenever you want is more than just a short-term loan. It is a complex service business that includes screening vendors, fraud investigations, a pay-by-phone system and a servicing unit that will tell you who is the vendor a charge was made for on your statement that you can’t remember who it is. That is what most of the 24 percent “interest” goes for.
In addition, as a former field enforcer for Richard Nixon’s price controls, I can tell you that “price controls” did not and do not work in a free-market society.
