UPDATE 1-Obama to take aim at credit card abuses

Sun Apr 19, 2009 10:30pm BST
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* Summers: Must stop push to addict people to credit

* U.S. Congress weighs rules to require greater disclosure

* White House officials to meet with credit card firms

(Adds administration official's comment)

By Caren Bohan

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to crack down on deceptive credit-card industry practices that have saddled U.S. consumers with huge debts and soaring interest rates, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers said Obama would be "very focused in the very near term on a whole set of issues having to do with credit card abuses."

"We need to do things to stop the marketing of credit in ways that addict people to it," Summers said in an interview on the NBC television talk show "Meet the Press."

Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the administration is concerned about practices that result in consumers being "deceived into paying extraordinarily high rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew they were getting themselves into."  Continued...

 
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