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Another area in which higher rates are likely to affect consumers is credit card use. And last week, the Federal Reserve reported that the average interest rate on credit cards reached 14.26 percent in February, the highest since 2001. That is up from 12.03 percent when rates bottomed in the fourth quarter of 2008 — a jump that amounts to about $200 a year in additional interest payments for the typical American household.

With losses from credit card defaults rising and with capital to back credit cards harder to come by, issuers are likely to increase rates to 16 or 17 percent by the fall, according to Dennis Moroney, a research director at the TowerGroup, a financial research company.


There's bankers logic for you. Rates are at an all time low, defaults are rising so let's put up the rates on the ones that can still pay so they start to default and penalise the ones that manage their accounts well.

If you lend money then charge huge interest you will be arrested as a loan shark...Do the same thing from a nice office you are a bank.......go figure......:mad: