Clebrity Night Shot

A few people with massive credit card debt are celebrating congressional inaction on a 40 year old law which allows consumers to walk away from card debt after sending appropriate letters to card companies or debt collection firms. This nearly secret federal law has come into very limited limelight again after the Federal Trade Commission used cartoonists to illustrate how this system works.

You would think millions of people would be using this nearly antique law to end their card debt problems especially during this depression but it appears that only a hand full of people are even aware of its existence and even fewer realize the power they can exert over card companies and debt collectors.

With card interest rates at a criminal 30% and one in six people delinquent on their accounts why aren't the servers smoking at the FTC website with people downloading the cure for their debt problems? The answer is there is no commercial gain for the dissemination of this information. It just exists and sits there waiting for someone to find it accidentally.

The only person that stands to make any money by using the information is the poor cardholder who has become the property of a card company or a collection agency if they are unable to pay the credit card account and you can bet the farm that neither is going to give the keys to their money machine to the poor guy that's playing their bills.

Can you imagine the uproar a headline on the Wall Street Journal or New York Times that said "new information company reveals secret to beating credit card debt for free" would create? You'll not see it happen because you can't make any money giving away something that's already free.

Card companies and collection agencies are in no danger whatsoever from this knowledge becoming public so no lobbyist will be paid any money to get Congress to repeal the 40 year old law that sits there gathering dust.

There is one small ray of hope for delinquent cardholders that might help them stumble upon the extremely valuable information. The website was just recently upgraded to include cartoons explaining the rights people have when claims are made that money is owed.

Only some highlights are covered with little detail on how to defeat a collector at his own game are given leaving the individual to dig deeper for answers on walking away from credit card debt legally morally and ethically. Perhaps a kid will understand the cartoons and make a fortune explaining it to those with big debt problems. Stranger things have happened.