Richard Murphy has a strange piece today on credit card rates.

In the meantime they ignore the real issue of incidence concerning banks - which is that the cost of rebuilding their balance sheets is falling on these least able to pay.

Yes, of course credit card companies will want to recoup the cost of providing credit cards to consumers through the levels of interest they charge. And, yes they will want to make a profit on the venture as well.

Credit card rates are very high - they always have been. Back in 2003, the boss of Barclays spluttered at Treasury Select Committee by stating that his company's credit cards were too expensive. But credit cards always were and always will be. And it's frankly absurd to paint credit card borrowers as the innocent victims of the credit crunch. At a time when banks are being required by the regulator to rebuild their balance sheets, of course they're going to get the money from their customers in charges. There is no other source of money.

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Filed under: Current issues, Other blogs with tags banks, barclays, credit cards, fsa, richard murphy, treasury committee