Andre Engels wrote:
>On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:28:00 +0100, Jens Ropers <ropers(a)ropersonline.com> wrote:
>
>
>>And worst of all, German banks treat requests for credit cards as
>>if you were asking for a complimentary limo ride. They are really
>>selective about who gets a credit card, because even they suffer
>>from the above delusion (all the worse for their business) and try
>>to let you feel that to be granted a credit card is a massive
>>privilege which should inspire your perpetual loyalty.
>>
>>
>Well, I think that's logical. Granting you a credit card means giving
>you a credit. I don't know about American and British banks, but
>European banks tend to give credit only to those who are expected to
>be able to pay it back.
>
>
With American banks at least, they care less about whether you can pay
back the funds they've extended to you on credit, as long as you have
the ability to keep making payments on the interest. The companies
involved make perhaps as much money from the interest they charge people
who carry a balance on their credit cards as they do from the
transaction fees they charge merchants for using the system. With the
interest rates involved, you can end up paying for the credit line many
times over. As a result, the criteria for obtaining a credit card are
not focused on actual wealth assets, but simply whether you have an
income stream (i.e. a paying job).
The relative merits of either system, as this debate shows, depend on
your point of view. Glancing at some of our articles, [[de:Kreditkarte]]
gives at least some treatment of the question, but [[en:Credit card]]
seems to be a pretty US-centric article. Even so, de: has superior
coverage of the history of credit cards _in the US_, although its
readability suffers from being a mass of unbroken text, or what Die Zeit
called a "Textwüste".
--Michael Snow