Consumers Feel the Next Crisis: It’s Credit Cards
由于全球金融衰退，失业人数攀升，上百亿无法偿还的信用卡债务成为次级房贷引发的多米多骨牌中倒下的最后一张大牌。美国的大银行与消费者权益倡导者形成了一个不同寻常的结盟，以敦促政府允许免除部分信用卡债务。与近年来银行业大力游说国会使破产的消费者难以抹去他们卡债的举动相比，可谓是180度的转变。
提案免除部分信用卡债务
美联社30日报导，代表100多个大型银行、金融公司和美国消费者联合会的金融服务圆桌会议（Financial Services Roundtable）将这一提案交给联邦监管机构。这一最多可免去40%卡债的计划，有可能使目前挣扎在卡债漩涡中的约5万个持卡人受益。
目前的政府规定不允许贷方提供减免主要债务和几年内还清欠款的计划。根据信用卡的协议，借款人通常都必须在几个月而不是几年内付清余额。
2008年上半年借款人拖欠的卡债估计有210亿美元。由于数以万计的工人因企业裁员而失业，一些曾经信用良好的失业族也难以继续支付卡债，下半年贷方还要至少损失550亿美元。目前，信用卡未偿债务总损失达5.5%，并可能超过2001年技术泡沫破灭后的7.9%。
该提案要求借款人须在信用卡债务的谘询计划中。根据借款人的财务状况决定宽免数额。那些能得到接受接近最高宽免比例的个人应接近申请个人破产。被减免的款项被作为收入应缴纳所得税。不过这笔所得税可以等到需要偿还的卡债在几年内付清后再进行缴税。
美国财政部负责监察各银行的美国货币监理（U.S.Comptroller of the Currency）办公室发言人穆奇（Kevin Mukri）对新提案没有立即发表评论。
发卡公司信用评估严格
纽约时报29日报导，一方面要求政府出面解围，另一方面，各发卡公司也在进行瘦身运动。发卡公司拒绝已经在债务困境中的申请人，并削减现有持卡人的信用额度，特别是生活在住房危机或工作在处境艰难的产业的持卡人。
发卡公司对信用卡申请者的信用评估更加严格。前几年，人们经常收到发卡公司各种招揽信用卡新客户的低息促销活动。现在平均每个美国家庭每年少收到13封申请信用卡的垃圾邮件。为新的和现有客户提供信用卡申请的邮件的将少于84亿件。
去年美国运通（American Express）4次下调商业和个人信用卡的金额上限，而欠款额的利率上调2至3%。
小小的长方形塑料卡片已成为美国人日常生活和经济运作的一部分。但深度的金融危机已使整个国家重新考虑其消费习惯。许多一向先买再付钱的家庭现在尽量减少对信用卡的依赖。花费7,000亿纳税人的钱来清理由于各种宽松的信贷而引发的经济混乱的财政部最近邀请消费者做“信用不良宾馆”（Bad Credit Hotel）的网上游戏以教育国民保持良好的信用。
First came the mortgage crisis. Now comes the credit card crisis.
After years of flooding Americans with credit card offers and sky-high credit lines, lenders are sharply curtailing both, just as an eroding economy squeezes consumers.
The pullback is affecting even creditworthy consumers and threatens an already beleaguered banking industry with another wave of heavy losses after an era in which it reaped near record gains from the business of easy credit that it helped create.
Lenders wrote off an estimated $21 billion in bad credit card loans in the first half of 2008 as more borrowers defaulted on their payments. With companies laying off tens of thousands of workers, the industry stands to lose at least another $55 billion over the next year and a half, analysts say. Currently, the total losses amount to 5.5 percent of credit card debt outstanding, and could surpass the 7.9 percent level reached after the technology bubble burst in 2001.
“If unemployment continues to increase, credit card net charge-offs could exceed historical norms,” Gary L. Crittenden, Citigroup’s chief financial officer, said.
Faced with sobering conditions, companies that issue MasterCard, Visa and other cards are rushing to stanch the bleeding, even as options once easily tapped by borrowers to pay off credit card obligations, like home equity lines or the ability to transfer balances to a new card, dry up.
Big lenders — like American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup and even the retailer Target — have begun tightening standards for applicants and are culling their portfolios of the riskiest customers. Capital One, another big issuer, for example, has aggressively shut down inactive accounts and reduced customer credit lines by 4.5 percent in the second quarter from the previous period, according to regulatory filings.
Lenders are shunning consumers already in debt and cutting credit limits for existing cardholders, especially those who live in areas ravaged by the housing crisis or who work in troubled industries. In some cases, lenders are even reining in credit lines after monitoring cardholders who shop at the same stores as other risky borrowers or who have mortgages from certain companies.
While such changes protect lenders, some can come back to haunt consumers. The result can be a lower credit score, which forces a borrower to pay higher interest rates and makes it harder to obtain loans. A reduced line of credit can also make it harder for consumers to manage their budgets, because lenders have 30 days to notify their customers, and they often wait to do so after taking action.
The depth of the financial crisis has shocked a credit-hooked nation into rethinking its habits. Many families once content to buy now and pay later are eager to trim their reliance on credit cards. The Treasury Department, which is spending billions of dollars in taxpayer money to clean up an economic mess brought on in part by all sorts of easy credit, recently started an advertising campaign inviting consumers to check into the “Bad Credit Hotel,” an online game that teaches the basics of maintaining good credit.
At the same time, the fear factor among lenders has deepened just as the crisis makes it harder for some financially stretched consumers to wean themselves from credit cards for even basic needs, like gas and food.
“We are not going to say, ‘Yahoo, this is over,’ and extend credit like we did without fear,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a recent conference call. “If you’re not fearful, you’re crazy.”
Even those with good credit ratings are not excepted. American Express, which traditionally catered to more upscale cardholders, said it would be increasing effective interest rates by 2 or 3 percentage points for some of its credit card holders — a move that could, for example, push a 15 percent rate up to 18 percent.
“We think it’s prudent given the nature of those products and the economic environment we face,” Daniel Henry, its chief financial officer, said in a recent conference call.
Some reward programs have also gotten stingier as lenders cut corners to save money. Card companies, for example, have taken to substituting cheaper brands for a Sony big-screen television as a way of lowering the cost of their redemption prizes.
For less creditworthy customers, issuers are pulling back on promotional offers that allowed borrowers to pay no interest for months as they try to get ahead of stiffer lending rules that have been proposed by federal banking regulators and Congress.
The regulations, while beneficial to consumers, will curb profits on card issuers’ riskiest customers. JPMorgan said that it was withdrawing some teaser-rate loans that were only marginally profitable. Discover Financial shortened the duration of its zero-balance offers.
And lenders, over all, are slowing the flood of mail offers to a trickle with moves that would translate for the average American household into about 13 fewer pieces of credit card junk mail a year than its peak in 2005. Mail offers to new and existing customers are on pace to drop below 8.4 billion pieces, the lowest level since 2004, according to Mintel Comperemedia, a direct marketing research firm.
Online credit card applications have fallen for the first time in five quarters, in part because customers are receiving fewer mail offers that drive them to the Web, according to data from comScore, an Internet marketing research firm.
“We used to get a couple of offers a week, but I haven’t seen a credit card offer in over a year,” said Brett Barry, who owns a real estate agency outside Phoenix and described his credit record as strong. “What blows me away is these companies are in the business of extending credit, but they don’t want to do it for me.”
Mr. Barry said that, without any notice, American Express had reduced the credit limit on his business and personal credit card at least four times in the last year, which he said had lowered his credit score. The moves have also made it difficult for him to manage his payroll and budget, he said.
“Credit card issuers have realized their market is shrinking and that there is no room for extra credit cards, so they have to scale back,” said Lisa Hronek, a research analyst at Mintel. “People are completely maxed out with mortgages, home equity lines and credit card debt.”
At the same time, credit card profit margins have been narrowing, largely because lenders’ own financing costs remain elevated as investors spurn credit card bonds, just as they did mortgages. Another factor is that the interest rates banks charge even creditworthy borrowers have come down after the emergency actions taken by the Federal Reserve to ease the credit crisis.
Meanwhile, bank executives say consumers are starting to curb their spending, to an extent that may become clearer Wednesday when Visa reports its third-quarter results.
In previous downturns, banks could make up the missing profits by raising fees. This time, there may be less room to maneuver.
“The last time credit costs spiked, the late fees were much lower, so card issuers could turn to that and reprice more nimbly,” a Morgan Stanley analyst, Betsy Graseck, said. “There is just more scrutiny now, and coming after the subprime mortgage crisis, the world is more sensitive to the way lenders behave.”