As has been reported in various outlets, yesterday Congress passed the Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights Act (2009), and sent it on over to President Obama to sign off on. The bill covers a variety of practices that range from shady to downright dishonest. As someone who had a very nice letter from his bank earlier this year informing me that, though they deeply regretted it, they were forced to raise my APR and lower my credit limit by forty dollars, thus putting me over the limit and allowing them to charge me for that particular pleasure, I’m pretty pleased about this. Even if it does come six months too late for me. Unless my bank was going to try that stunt again. They’d never do that, would they?

There’s a super helpful website here that will let you see exactly with which of the new regulation s your credit card issuer is in compliance. As you’ll notice, none currently offer protection against arbitrary rate increase, and nor do they have a system whereby any payments made will count against the balance with the highest APR. Clearly, there is a long way to go on this, and doubtless some of the less scrupulous providers will already be looking for ways to work around the new rules. In an ideal world, we’d all limit our credit card use, pay it off every month, and that would be that. Realistically, this isn’t going to happen.

It’s interesting that the new administration has chosen to tackle this so soon into their term of office. There are a number of political gains to be made from this. First up, it’s something that almost everyone can get behind. Even the most anti-regulation of Republican congressmen would have trouble selling his or her opposition a significant number of constituents; after all, this is something that protects some of the most vulnerable members of society from the big corporations. Secondly, no-one is going to step up and defend these large financial institutions from the threat of tighter regulations; rightfully or not, they have all been tarred with the same mismanagement brush.

There might be a more subtle reason, however. A large amount of this country’s economy is based on consumer spending; spending that is often done on credit cards. At the onset of the downturn, people lost a lot of confidence in financial institutions. A law like this is a graphic illustration of how the government is committed to increased regulation and customer protections. Accordingly, this should increase confidence, hopefully lead to increased spending, and help to kick start the economy.

Whatever the reasons, it’d be churlish not to welcome the steps that President Obama and Congress is taking; hopefully this is not the last in a series of measures focusing on banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and the like. There is still real will in the general populace and in political circles to get some laws passed, so let us hope that the chance is not missed.