2007-12-08, Secret History of the Credit Card (1)

Tonight on Frontline.
The average American family has eight (0% for life on transfer balances. ) credit cards. Plastic money have become both a necessity and a ticket to a better life. (Hawaii, yeah! )
A credit card is an extraordinary, unbelievably great convenience for the consumer.
But the credit card industry plays by its own rules.
I don't know any merchant in America who can change the price after you bought the item except credit card company.
Credit card banks earn record profits.
MBNA's profits last year, one and a half times that of McDonald's. But McDonald's was too tuned¹ up last year.
But the profits come at a price.
Now they've raised my rate to 19. 98. And I've not been late ever.
There are irritated, unhappy, dissatisfied customers in this industry. They are the new loan sharks in America.
I suddenly did imagine that some day we might have ended up creating a Frankenstein. Frankenstein, what do you mean Frankenstein?
Tonight, Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergman and the New York Times investigate the secrets of your credit card.

This may seem an unlikely place to begin a modern history of the credit card. More than a thousand miles from Wall Street and the paneled halls of the Federal Reserve in Washington. But this is where the credit card business first began to really take off.

This is Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A modest town of 140, 000, known for its cattle auctions² and meat-packing industry. It's a town which boasts a huge post office, big enough to service a city several times its size. Every day, millions of pieces of mail pass through here and from here, millions of credit card solicitations and bills are sent to mailboxes across America. And billions of dollars in credit card payments come in from around the world.

Today, Sioux Falls is one of the major credit card processing centers in the country. It all happened in Sioux Falls because a quarter of a century ago, times were hard in South Dakota. There was a nationwide recession with double-digit inflation. Money was very tight. South Dakota banks were issuing very few mortgages or loans of any kind.
Interest rates were going into orbit, they were climbing all the time.
Bill Janklow was then the governor of South Dakota.
When I became the governor of South Dakota, South Dakota had very tight historical laws on what you could charge to borrow. In other words, there was one interest rate by law that they could charge for new cars, another one for used cars. It was highly regulated what interest rates people could pay. What I'm trying to say is, we may have a law that said you could charge 9% but money cost 11%, so banks weren't loaning money.
To get the banks to issue loans, South Dakota decided³ to eliminate its historic cap on interest rates, known as a Usury⁴ Law.
We had actually changed some of our laws since '79. And we had previously⁵ introduced legislation and passed legislation, and we were passing legislation to lift the ceilings on usury, so we could free up and get capital in South Dakota.

1 tuned   

adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• The resort is tuned in to the tastes of young and old alike. 这个度假胜地适合各种口味，老少皆宜。
• The instruments should be tuned up before each performance. 每次演出开始前都应将乐器调好音。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 auctions   

n.拍卖，拍卖方式( auction的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They picked up most of the furniture at auctions in country towns. 他们大部分的家具都是在乡村镇上的拍卖处买的。 来自辞典例句
• Our dealers didn't want these cars, so we had to dump them at auctions. 我们的承销商都不要这些车子，因此我们只好贱价拍卖。 来自辞典例句

3 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

4 usury   

n.高利贷

参考例句：

• The interest of usury is unfairly high.高利贷的利息惊人得高。
• He used to practise usury frequently.他过去经常放高利贷。

5 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。