Obama To Take Aim at Credit Card Abuses

President Barack Obama plans to crack down on deceptive credit-card industry practices that have saddled U.S. consumers with huge debts and soaring interest rates, a senior aide said Sunday.

Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said Obama would be "very focused in the very near term on a whole set of issues having to do with credit card abuses."

"We need to do things to stop the marketing of credit in ways that addict people to it," Summers said in an interview on the NBC television talk show "Meet the Press."

Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the administration is concerned about practices that result in consumers being "deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew they were getting themselves into."

Summers and other officials are scheduled to meet next Thursday at the White House with top executives of credit card companies.

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The meeting comes as lawmakers have vented anger that banks with big credit card operations charging high interest rates and fees are the same institutions getting government bailouts from U.S. taxpayers who use these credit cards.

The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate are considering a credit card "bill of rights" that would limit the ability of credit card companies to raise interest rates on existing balances and require greater disclosure of terms.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has spoken out against complexity in consumer lending practices that is designed to confuse customers and drive up lending fees.

The Fed in December tightened up rules concerning credit-card practices and the proposed legislation would take those efforts further.

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