The secret history of the credit card

The importance of this product to our life style is obvious. It helps us with our daily transactions, but also allow people to do some purchases, specially high price products or services. Whitout that instant finantiation, those persons probably couldn't ever afford. But credit cards have also a dark side, which not only depends on how costumers use them, also on how credit card companies are treating their clients and managing their business.

In one hand, we have the fact that that help to buy thanks to finantiation could become a danger to that people who aren't able to control themselves when go shopping. Defering the payment make some people feel free to buy more than if they had to pay at the same time they are purchasing. But this is not an issue, like many other things, a bad use doesn't mean that the product or service is bad.

However, in the other hand, as we can see in the documentary, dishonest measures and practices that credit card companies have been performing since the early years that product were born, must be ilegal. In my opinion, one of the worst is the "Universal Default" practice. It's just an expression to explain how companies modify, by their own, the conditions of the contract they dealt previously with their costumers. I can't imagine any other industry where this way of act couldn't be banned by the authorities. This and other tricks are focused on rise the interest and fees costumers have to pay for the credit card debt. The lobby of this industry has a lot of power in the federal administration, no matter if republican or democratic, this is the reason why few regulation has been created to limit the greed of these companies.

From my point of view, key industries like finantial one, as well as the educational and the welfare, must be more regulated than the rest.They are basics for the well-running of society.If not, there's always the chance for shark companies to act fraudulently. Unfortunatelly, history is plenty of examples for any kind of industry. However, the difference is that in basic services like these are, if people who suffered frauds doesn't see their goverment helping them , there is not only economical losses and damage, the whole democratic system gets hurts.