Product Description
Credit card usury is legal, widespread, and perceived as a legitimate form of commerce. Yet it causes despair, hopelessness, physical pain, emotional torment, and financial servitude. Long-term consequences due to a poor credit score can negatively impact housing, employment, and eligibility for educational loans, among other things. At a time when greed is at an all time high Christian leaders have consistently failed to use their pulpits to speak out agai… More >>
As a former student who struggled to get out from underneath credit card debt due to steadily rising interest rates after graduation, I found the stories in this book only all too familiar. Today’s college campuses have become a breeding ground for future debtors as credit card company representatives flog free t-shirts and the like in exchange for another approved applicant. Paul Jesep’s book exposes the seamy underbelly of today’s financial industry that lures people in with the promise of financial freedom and ends up making them victims struggling to make ends meet.
Rating: 5 / 5
Bishop Jesep has yet again written a book that is both timely and well-researched. This time, he aimed his sights on credit card usury. For too long, the poor and even the middle class have been abused by credit card companies with many promises and very few benefits. Bishop Jesep addresses the contemporary problems, with detailed research and extensive footnoting, as well as how Christians should be outraged at the current system. He develops a plan to center our response on the Eucharist, to prevent the current abuse. This book is the best of both worlds: theology and public policy, drawing on the author’s extensive background in both. I highly reccomend this book.
Fr. William
Rating: 5 / 5
Paul Jesep has raised our collective heads out of the sands of compliancy through this thoroughly researched accounting of corporate greed at the hands of the “Have’s”, and balanced on the backs of the “Have Not’s”. This book begs us to recognize the failures of our political and religious leaders to protect and council those in our communities — ripe for the picking by unscrupulous `creditors’ and `lenders’ and calling on those same leaders to act in the best interests of those they have been called to serve. It’s time to end the deceitful and immoral practices that reward those who take refuge in darken “dens” on Wall Street and corporate America, by driving them out into the light of day and onto Main Street. I heartily recommend this book and the lessons it shares.
Rating: 5 / 5
Credit card usury in America impoverishes and condemns to lifelong servitude many of our working class Americans who really are the backbone of America’s strength. It is 21st century feudalism! The more you make, the more they take…even to the point of forcing you into bankruptcy. Most credit card practices have been allowed to run uncontrolled by the lack of governance at federal and state levels. It is no secret that banks and financial institutions are among the largest contributors to our elected officials so the line between ethical and amoral blurs…dramatically. There is no shame in the credit card industry.
Credit card usury and abuse has run rampant. Incredibly, some state and federal laws permit credit card interest rates in excess of 79 percent. That is an outrage. So is 39, 29, and 19 percent. This new book by Bishop Paul Peter Jesep is a daring attempt to break that chain of shame, to bring this into our religious institutions and into the streets and coffee shops. In America there is supposed to be separation of church and state but, in my view, middle class and poor people have been abandoned by Congress whose constitutional obligation is to serve and protect citizens.
About 20 years ago Congress said it was looking into this matter, then suddenly it announced its involvement was not needed and would be an intrusion into capitalism! Does that sudden withdrawal tell us anything? So much for our elected officials representing the people.
The author’s question, “Have Christians failed to be their brother and sister’s keeper in this area of the economy?” is thoughtful and fair. The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. In our extreme self-centerdness and greed we have forgotten that “everything, including personal and commercial wealth belongs to the creator,” and the money powers have convinced themselves that it is all theirs, that their genius entitles them to steal from cardholders with impunity.
How do the rest of us take what the author tells us and run with it? How do we move this revealing book’s information into the street and into our coffee shop conversations? Once we do that, it will be picked up by others and can grow exponentially. Then, the sheer force of that movement can begin to give banks and financial institutions a strong message that it might be to their advantage to retreat, reconsider, and revise their unethical methods. It is time. It is way past that time.
All the talk about socialism is a delusion. We already have socialism with our socialized risk and privatized profits. It is socialism for the elite, capitalism for the masses.
Credit card usury in America is finally recognized for what it is. Now, it needs public discussion. Perhaps that will coax Congress to get out in front of the parade and lead it. This book will be another large step in the right direction. Do yourself a huge favor. Buy it. Gift it, too.
Rating: 5 / 5
After reading Bishop Paul Peter Jesep’s latest book which calls for social justice against the money changers ( credit card companies), I was left with a heightened sense of outrage. Is it public indifference or ignorance that has created this unending credit debt which enslaves a majority of our population? Bishop Jesep has carefully researched the subject in precise detail and illustrates that this social injustice is as great or greater than the many forms of abuse currently fought by churches and government social services.
Reading this book has caused me to ask friends and acquaintances if they are aware of the lack of credit card usury laws. Are they aware of the extent to which usurious interest rates will keep credit card users indebted forever? To a person, the immediate reaction is shock and disbelief. Then the questions ” How can we end this abuse? What can be done?”
Perhaps Bishop Jesep’s new book should be included as a required textbook in U.S. business schools and universities. Present day consumerism flies in the face of the old adage we were taught as children in Maine ” Use it up, Wear it out, Make do, or Do without”!
Purchase two copies and give one away…Nancy Hayward Milani
Rating: 5 / 5