Should the credit card companies pay a windfall profits tax?

With all this talk about taxing the huge profits of the oil companies, doesn't it seem fair to tax the credit card companies as well?....Keeping in mind that we need oil much more than legal loan sharking.

Public Comments

1. Yes. The credit card companies are extremly abusive. They charge usurious interest rates and change those rates to increase them to ridiculous levels after the get people signed up on the account. The fees these companies charge are obscene. The credit card companies are extremely abusive and destructive. They produce nothing of value and steal billions of dollars from consumers every year. The Credit companies need to be investigated and taxed heavily.
2. lets not forget the grossly exuberant salaries of the hollywood actors who have way too much time on their hands and way too much money to spend...shouldn't we tap into that excess??
3. No. Those that think they should would fit right in as an anti-capitalist, a socialist or maybe even as a communist. Pick the one that fits your beliefs best. The credit card companies will pay sufficient taxes on their profits and earnings - the highest in the developed world. And where do you think the rest of the profits go? They are used to expand the business and hire people to make more profits or distributed to the stockholders in the form of dividends. And who are the stockholders? The stockholders are you and me!!! We get the money back through our 401K or other holdings. If instead the company must pay more of the profit as taxes then it just gets spent by congress and does not end up in your pocket or mine. It is a stupid idea and loved only by egalitarian socialists and communists. .
4. Without a doubt credit card companies are essentially legalized loan sharks. If fact I think they are actually much worse. In most states there are no usury laws and they can legally charge as much as they want. Their whole goal is to trap people into endless debt service. They can legally chase you down and garnish your wages anywhere you go. You see back in the day you had Micky the loan shark. If you did not pay your loan back you would get a visit from Vinny the arm. He would adjust your nose a bit so you would understand the finer points of letting your debts get out of hand. People knew about Vinny and were much more careful with using credit, that is borrowing money. Now people are in more in debt than ever before. Ever heard of The Great Depression? What people did is they went “on margin” (borrowed money) to buy stocks. Then they would spend the money they made on the stocks like drunken sailors. It was great, the stocks kept going up in value, you could not loose, they called this time the roaring 20's. Today people have done the same sort of thing but in a different way. They ran up their credit cards (spent money like a drunken sailor) and payed them off by using the rapidly rising equity in there homes, this is in fact the same as going “on margin” in the stock market. This was all done with creative home financing if fact they gave people no choice as they would print checks to people refinancing home loans to encourage them to spend the new equity. People kept going deeper and deeper into margin. Now the housing market crashed. And now just like The Great Depression banks are in real trouble. It was the bank failures that brought in the reality of The Great Depression. This was caused by heavy use of going on margin (borrowing money that could not be paid back.) And peoples misuse of credit cards, that is going on margin, is at the root of the problem.