Frontline’s Secret History of the Credit Card

As I was clearing out my bookmark list, I came across one of my “favorite” website of all time.

I think a lot of us have seen this website or have watched the PBS Frontline special before; but if you haven’t, you really owe it to yourself to check out Frontline’s Secret History of the Credit Card.

The site not only has a wide variety of articles on the topic, but it contains the full program for you to watch via Real Player or Windows Media Player. One of the article, “Eight Things A Credit Card User Should Know” contains basic but very important information for credit card users.

If you want to read more on the subject, you should check out their Explore section, which contains even more imporant information.

The “Snapshot of the Industry Map” was definitely an eye opener for me. Here’s the description from the website:

“This map shows the top ten credit card issuers, their state of charter (except for AmEx and Capital One that are not nationally chartered), and the maximum interest percentage cap for credit cards.

These clusters were largely formed by a 1978 Supreme Court decision (Marquette National Bank v. First of Omaha Service Corp.) that determined national banks only have to obey the interest-rate caps of the state they are chartered in, not that of the state where a bank’s customer lives. This means that when a bank from a state without limits on interest, like Delaware, issues credit cards to people living in states like Minnesota, which caps credit card interest at 18 percent, the customer can be charged any rate of interest.”