THIS is what Sen. MBNA supported in 2005

MBNA itself pushing people toward bankruptcy. Former MBNA account managers spill the beans on their company’s shady policies and practices.

There’s now talk about putting credit card reform in the bailout bill. Well, you know that’s got a snowball’s chance.

Is it any wonder that Obama himself, and other Democrats, want to kick the can of regulatory reform down the road past the election?

Senator MBNA might just fit with his leader?

Note: This is retitled from a 2007 post, with a link from earlier this week from a Florida bankruptcy lawyer included in the main.

In addition to Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton voted FOR an initial version of the new bankruptcy bill in 2001, as did other now-presidentially deceased Democrats.

Barack Obama voted no on the 2005 version. But, is Obama totally clean?

Err, in the final 2005 bill, he voted AGAINST a 30 percent cap on interest rates. That’s because financial firms, as a industry/professional group, were his second-biggest bloc of donors already at that time; of course, they're at the top of the list now.

We need national regulation of the credit industry, and with standards tougher than Delaware and South Dakota. Unfortunately, we're not hardly any more likely to get it from a Biden administration than a McCain one.

Carmen Dellutri of Florida Bankruptcy Blog appears to agree. Dellutri also notes how both Obama and Biden cast an apparently political grandstanding vote re first mortgages and the bankruptcy code earlier this year.

I hate to sound like a naysayer, but these guys are smart and they know how to play politics.

OK to be a naysayer, Mr. Dellutri.

House Dem whore out to credit card companies

Thursday, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions of the House Committee on Financial Services was holding hearings on credit card debt, related to a bill sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney that would outlaw some of the worst credit card tricks and traps. People with debt problems had been invited to speak, until they got this switcheroo:

The people who had been invited to testify had flown in from around the country with their credit card bills in hand, only to learn that they couldn't talk unless they would sign a waiver that would permit the credit card companies to make public anything they wanted to tell about their financial records, their credit histories, their purchases, and so on. The Republicans and Democrats had worked out a deal "to be fair to the credit card lenders." These people couldn't say anything unless they were willing to let the credit card companies strip them naked in public.

Look at Maloney put her tail between her legs:

“In order to have a discussion that focused entirely on the substance and not on process, we are doing everything we can to accommodate any concerns that have been raised.”

Credit card company reps had already gotten to speak in a previous session, without any requirement that they sign waivers about what all they had done with financial data, how good or poor their privacy protections were, etc. etc.

Good thing this wasn’t the Senate, where Joe Biden, Sen. MBNA, probably wouldn’t have let the people show up in the first place.