Or your credit score will be hurt, and the people who have the money currently refusing to make new loans will… um… not make you new loans either way?
“Don’t cancel the card to spite the card company because you’ll just hurt your own credit,” said Emily Peters, San Francisco-based personal finance expert at consumer Web Site credit.com.
Cardholders will damage their credit history if they cancel an older account and lose the available credit on that card, she said.
A Bloomberg story via Mish. The main article is about how big companies are cutting card limits and lowering your credit scores – without you cancelling cards – because your debt to available credit ratio goes up which ruins your credit score. Witness:
The credit limits on Brown’s cards have been lowered, which has raised his debt relative to his available credit. This so-called utilization rate is a key factor in determining credit scores. Brown, a 58-year-old construction company owner in San Diego, has seen his credit score drop to 650 from 760 over the past 13 months.
And yet, I still get these stupid checks in the mail from Chase begging me to live a little with the ‘money’ that’s locked up in my credit card (punishment fees and punishment rates apply, of course, as it’s a cash withdrawal). As if I couldn’t just swipe my card to do the same shit for cheaper.
And then, Jesus Fucking Christ (sorry Xians), Achnuold Schrvoewhtzuanegger says “Stop whining about the economy! Stop looking at the past and telling people how they’ve fucked up the present! Just tell us how YOU are gonna fix the future.”
“It doesn’t make any sense for people to sit back and whine and to complain about the economy slowing down because we have to look forward rather than back,” he said during a speech at the Cebit trade fair in Hanover, Germany, on Tuesday.
“We have to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. And the only way we are going to do this is by being optimistic and finding new ways to stimulate the economy,” he said.
Sorry you had a run-away budget after getting elected on a fiscally conservative platform, you arrogant Hollywood fuck. I even voted for a REPUBLICAN against this fool but everyone had starry eyed Governatormania and he won by a fucking landslide with NO QUALIFICATIONS for the job.
The governor also spoke out against trade protectionism. Trade barriers thrown up to protect important national industries during times of recession stand to cost California-based companies business.
“It’s something we have done in America in the thirties and it has backfired in a huge way,” he said. “We should not go in that direction, we should learn from those mistakes. This is now a world where the world is the marketplace.”
At least he’s not a total fool. But why doesn’t he man up and take some responsibility for taking us on a credit binge that threatens to RUIN our state if not bailed out by the Fed? Sure, he was just continuing past failed policies. But not getting introspective about the CAUSES of this means that there wont be any FIXES, just bandaids on the SYMPTOMS. But the cancer of credit is still there.
Everyone thinks credit is a necessary thing. That society couldn’t exist without it. Capitalism may not be able to exist without credit, but it’s just a new type of slavery. I’ve been there. I’ve had the hundred+ dollars a month minimum payments, the constant worry, the interest almost as much as the minimum payment. Every dollar you borrow you pay back twice. Why not just wait and buy things for half of what you’d spend if you had credit?
Tags: fuck credit