Marshall McLuhan the great media ecologist wrote many years ago that the “Medium is the Message.”   So if, let’s say, your post person drops off a piece of mail that looks like junk mail, the credit card companies know you will most likely throw the mail away.  Please be careful of the latest scam foisted on the American people by credit card companies which are now sending notices of your account in the form of junk mail.  You can opt out of the increases but you have to respond and you won’t do that if you throw out the junk mail notice without reading it. Clever! And the companies probably paid some advertising company millions for this scheme for their greed, the root of all evil. So read even the junk mail.  Think of it as a part of purgatory.

Why are the credit card companies playing this trick on their customers?  Because in February, 2010, finally, Congress, timidly set limits on certain onerous credit card gouging practices. Congress gave them months to wage economic war upon us.  One customer reported recently that his credit card called him and told him the company wasn’t making any money off of him because he did the right thing.  He paid on time and avoided higher penalties and higher rates.  So McLuhan, the prophet in the mid-1960’s prediction has finally come true: that cash or money would become the poor man’s credit card. Someone tried to pay cash recently at a store and had to show her driver’s license.  Just a joke. 

Dante in his Inferno condemns those who a guilty of greed to the 4th rung of hell.  They are condemned for all eternity to push with their chests huge bags of coins, up a mountain.  Shouts of “Why do you squander?” fill the dry mouths of the greedy fight with the prodigals whose howls loudly scream “Why do you squander?” They are condemned to fight with each other for all eternity. They can’t understand each other.  

I just wonder on which rung in hell Congress will end up for not acting to stop the companies before February of 2010?