Remember the “bankruptcy reform” of a few years ago, lobbied for heavily by credit card issuers like MBNA?

The net effect was to make it harder to discharge debts in bankruptcy; it became easier for credit card issuers to keep their hooks in a defaulting consumer indefinitely (thereby reducing their need to perform due diligence on credit applicants. Iirc the banks sought, but did not get, the right to seize defaulting consumers’ retirement assets.) Now here we are with an overhang of bad debts impeding recovery. I’d bet that the bank CEOs who did the Bush-era lobbying have meanwhile retired with at least eight-figure net worths.

Heckuva job, George. Again.