Credit where it’s due
More news today about the new financial legislation that's set to reform how Americans borrow:
You may remember our discussion a few days ago about the end of free checking accounts. The New York Times today reports on the proposed changes to debit card fees that I mentioned. Although nothing's been finalized yet, it's confirmed that the house and senate want the federal reserve to impose limits on the fees that are collected from merchants - which amounted to $19.7 billion last year...
A little more immediate are further changes that will be put into play on July 1. Essentially, the governement is making it very difficult to extend credit where it isn't 'due'.
The federal government... is for the first time requiring that lenders verify a borrower's income and assets before issuing a home loan. It has also slapped broad new rules on credit-card issuers, limiting their ability to boost interest rates and charge certain fees.
There are some interesting further changes, for example maximum interest rates on payday loans, that may be much better for the consumer, but will also reduce the credit available in the country. (I'm trying to remain unbiased...) Some states will be enforcing new regulations from July 1 as well.
I don't think I can have any idea what kind of impact these new laws might have on your personal finances, but I can say that it's important you educate yourself about them. When a bunch of new regulations are enacted, there are a lot of changes to make in a lot of computers, and that can mean a lot of things going wrong. Making sure you know what banks and lenders are and aren't allowed to do is your best defense against glitches (and against "glitches", with quotation marks).
