The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey

liked to keep them fueled. "I'll tell our people to think about it, Bracken."
    "What I wish other people would think about is that Shylocking eighteen percent interest all bank credit cards charge." "We've been over that before."
    "Yes, we have. And I've never heard an explanation which satisfied me."
    He countered sharply, "Maybe you don't listen." Enjoyable in debate or not, Margot had a knack of getting under his skin. Occasionally their debates developed into fights.
    "I've told you that credit cards are a packaged commodity, offering a range of services," Alex insisted. "If you add those services together, our interest rate is not excessive." "It's as excessive as hell if you're the one who's paying.. "Nobody has to pay. Because nobody has to bo rrow." "I can hear you. You don't have to shout." "All right."
    He took a breath, determined not to let this discussion get out of hand. Besides, while disputing some of Margot's views, which in economics, politics, and everything else were left of center, he found his own thinking aided by her forthrightness and keen lawyer's mind. Margot's practice, too, brought her contacts which he lacked directly among the city's poor and underprivileged for whom the bulk of her legal work was done. He awed, "Another cognac?" "Yes, please."
    It was cl ose to midnight. A log fire, blazing earlier, had burned low in the hearth of the snug room in the small, sumptuous bachelor suite.
    An hour and a half ago they had had a late dinner here delivered from a service restaurant on the apartment block's main floor. An excellent Bordeaux , Alex's choice, Chateau Gruaud-Larose '66 accompanied the meal.
    Apart from the area where the Keycharge advertising had been spread out, the apartment lights were low.
    When he had replenished their brandy glasses, Alex returned to the argument. "If people pay their credit-card bills when they get them, there is no interest charge." "You mean pay their bills in full." "Right."
    "But how many do? Don't most credit-card users pay that convenient 'minimum balance' that the statements show?" "A good many pay the minimum, yes."
    "And carry the rest forward as debt which is what you bankers really want them to do. Isn't that so?"
    Alex conceded, "Yes, it's true. But banks have to make a profit somewhere."
    "I lie awake nights," Margot said, 'worrying if banks are making enough profit."
    As he laughed, she went on seriously, "Look, Alex, thousands of people who shouldn't are piling up long-term debts by using credit cards. Often it's to buy trivia drugstore items, phonograph records, bits of hardware, books, meals, other minor things; and they do it partly through unawareness, partly because small amounts of credit are ridiculously easy to obtain. And those small amounts, which ought to be paid by cash, add up to crippling debts, burdening imprudent people for years ahead."
    Alex cradled his brandy glass in both hands to warm it, sipped, then rose and tossed a fresh log on the fire. He protested, "You're worrying too much, and the problem isn't that big."
    And yet, he admitted to himself, some of what Margot had said made sense. Where once as an old song put it miners "owed their souls to the company store," a new breed of chronic debtor had arisen, naively mortgaging future life and income to a "friendly neighborhood bank." One reason was that credit cards had replaced, to a large extent, small loans. Where individuals used to be dissuaded from excessive borrowing, now they made their own loan decisions often unwisely. Some observers, Alex knew, believed the system had downgraded American morality.
    Of course, doing it the credit-card way was much cheaper for a bank; also, a small loan customer, borrowing through the credit-card route, paid substantially higher interest than on a conventional loan. The total interest the bank received, in fact, was often as high as twenty-four percent since merchants who honored credit cards paid their own additional bank levy, ranging