A New Era

...for credit cards, that is. Well, sort of. As of today, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act comes into force. Among other things, banks will now have to offer 45 days' notice before changing terms(!), payments have to be applied to the highest-interest balance first(!!), and banks can no longer retroactively raise interest rates on credit card balances(!!!). Shocking, I know, that this bill got passed in the first place. For someone who doesn't carry a balance, though, this doesn't really affect me, other than the threat from banks that they'll start paring back rewards programs -- which they were already doing anyway -- and start charging annual fees to make up for lost revenue -- but won't, because they would then lose all their customers.

Now if only we could get some sort of financial reform passed....