Senators Seek Quick Card Rate Freezes

As President Obama was meeting with bankers to discuss card practices at the White House, Sens. Charles Schumer and Chris Dodd got in on the action by calling on federal regulators to freeze card interest rates immediately.

In a letter to the heads of the Federal Reserve Board, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration, the senators wrote that emergency steps must be taken to help consumers deal with the financial crisis.

"Over the past year, the Federal Reserve has cited the financial crisis as one of the reasons for acting quickly to implement new lending facilities and programs to protect financial institutions," the letter said. "It is long past time for the regulatory agencies to act with the same sense of urgency to protect consumers from the behavior of those same financial companies."

The letter asked the regulators to implement immediately card regulations that are due to go into effect next year by invoking emergency authority under the "good cause" exception to the Administrative Procedures Act.

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