"We'll show them!"

The credit card companies may be using the above headline as their new marketing slogan. Pulled a flier from one of my credit card issuers from the mail box yesterday. Essentially the card said we are raising prices for your credit card in order to maintain profitability on your account. We are not offering you any more service. We have nothing additional to provide you for these additional charges, we just need to charge you more. This is one of those companies who got a piece of the bailout -- from taxpayer funds. The timing was not bad either, coming the same week as the President signed new legislation trying to reign in the multiple abuses these companies have foisted on their customers. One of the elements of this letter that is interesting is how similar the letter in my mail box was to another I saw earlier in the week from another irate credit card customer of another provider. He had even gotten through on the number and the person answering told him very nicely, just as the letter stated, 'Sir, you have a choice, you don't have to continue being our customer, we don't mind.' It is interesting how two completely separate companies can put out pretty much the same letter to customers in the same week saying 'continue with us or don't your choice we really don't care. Back in the civics classes from eighth grade there were these words they explained like monopoly and restraint of trade and price fixing that seem now to have very concrete meanings for what then might have been abstract concepts. Coincidence the wording is nearly the same from two different companies? Coincidence that the letters come the same week the government is trying to regulate surprise rate hikes and usurious penalties? How do you build community when the major motivation of many of the most important institutions appears to be, "We'll show you!?" This is not a free-market system with this much coincidence. Guess they are learning from the oil companies, who all appear to raise their prices by the exact same pennies or dimes or quarters at exactly the same time on exactly the same day all over this highly diverse country.