Montana Viewpoint: Money for nothing

Jim Elliott

Just before the official days of excessive purchasing named Black Friday, and Cyber Monday which follow immediately on the heels of the National Day of Gluttony, Turkey Thursday, I received a new credit card.

Just for giggles, I thought I’d read the fine print. The rate of interest would be 14.99 percent. “Didn’t Jesus throw the money lenders out of the Temple?” I thought. The late fee would be 29.99 percent and would apply to future purchasers at the discretion of the bank. I then thought of a friendly fellow I knew who was originally from Chicago. “What did you do there?” I asked him once. He smiled, and said, “I was in collections.” I wondered if he had worked for a bank or some other organization.

Where did these high credit card rates come from? Long ago there were state laws that prohibited usury, which is the charging of excessive interest on loans. When did that all change?

In the United State that date would be February 6, 1980, when a bill to abolish the South Dakota usury laws passed that state’s legislature. In the 1970s inflation was running at about 20 percent and to tame the trend, Paul Volker, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank had allowed the rate at which the Fed loaned money to banks to rise to 20 percent. In South Dakota and elsewhere in the 1970s farmers were having a very hard time of it for many reasons and needed to borrow money from banks just to survive. But South Dakota banks were not about to lend out money at the legal maximum rate of 12 percent when they had to pay 20 percent interest just to borrow the money from the Federal Reserve.

In a related issue, in 1978 Marquette Bank of Minneapolis was having their credit card business undermined by First National Bank of Omaha, which was issuing credit cards to Minnesota residents at 18 percent interest which was the top usury rate in Nebraska but with no annual fee. Marquette was issuing credit cards at the 12 percent maximum interest rate imposed by Minnesota, but they did charge an annual fee. They were losing business to the Nebraska bank. Marquette went to court, arguing that Nebraska banks could not charge a rate of interest in Minnesota that was higher than Minnesota banks could charge in their own state. Marquette lost. In a unanimous opinion the Supreme Court ruled that the usury law of the issuing state held, no matter where the cardholder lived.

In a second related issue, Citibank of New York was bound to the New York usury law of 13 percent and was losing money. After the Marquette decision, Citibank began looking for a new state to do its credit card business in. Under federal banking law a bank could not move to a state without an invitation to relocate, which was conveniently provided by (usury free) South Dakota on the last day of its legislative session in 1980. Citibank relocated its credit card operations to Sioux Falls, S.D. as soon as it could, bringing with it 500 new jobs, a new building, and as a special gift to its cardholders, a higher interest rate.

That’s the history of the beginning of high rates. The morality of charging high rates on loans goes back at least—as I have said—to Jesus throwing the money lenders out of the Temple when he said, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13 KJV).

People who loan money will tell you that the rate they charge reflects the risk they take that the loan won’t be repaid. The higher the risk, the higher the interest charged. It used to be that bankers didn’t like to take risks. They loaned money, sure. They made money on the interest charged, sure. But they also wanted the borrower to have a solid reason for borrowing money and to be successful in the business the customer was borrowing the money for. If it was a mortgage, they wanted you to be able to afford the loan. They did not loan money for toys or vacations. They looked out for themselves by looking out for their customers.

Now, it seems, all they want to do is make money off their customers, and the faster the better. Bankers used to educate their customers because success was a two-way street. Today, people are drowning in credit card debt, and nobody seems to care. Well, someone might, but it’s not the banks.

Have fun, but don’t go broke doing it.

Montana Viewpoint has appeared in weekly and online newspapers across Montana for over 30 years. Jim Elliott served sixteen years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.