High Time to Repeal the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005

(Due to its having helped caused the Bubble in the Housing Market, etc.), it is High Time to Repeal the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”

By Kevin Stoda, a representative of thousands of harrassed victim of that Act

I have been dumbfounded at the lack of discussion in the USA and in Congress specifically on repealing one of the most devastating personal finance disasters of recent years. I am talking about the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”—which has made it difficult for Americans of all types to properly negotiate or threaten bad- and usurous lenders (like Citibank, Bank of America, Freddy Mac, and various bottom-feeding credit-buyer or credit-swap firms around the USA) with bankrupcy.

The 2005 Act was pased to protect the likes of Citibank and friends from their onw usurous tendencies and free-wheeling charging of unfair penalties on loans to unsuspecting credit card users and home buyers in the USA.

Why should these banks and ill-run financiers–and the firms they trade our debt with-around-the-clock—be allowed to continue to harrass Americans with penalties while they were bailed out in the trillions of dollars by the USA government with our tax money over the past 4 years?

It is insanely unfair not to grant reprieves to the Americans suffering under the thumbs of these goliaths.

Listen up, America!!!

NOTE: “The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) (Pub.L. 109-8, 119 Stat. 23, enacted April 20, 2005), was a law enacting several significant changes to the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. It was passed by the109th United States Congress on April 14, 2005 and signed into law by President George W. Bush on April 20, 2005. Most provisions of the act apply to cases filed on or after October 17, 2005.”

As of October 2005, those people who filed for bankurpcy were required to pay “much higher fees to bankruptcy attorneys, who …. raise[d] their rates by as much as 100 percent. That [was] to account for the increased liability the new law impose[d] on them, which … mean[t] more time verifying and filing client documents.”
Moreover, “[c]onsumers who . . . [sought] to file bankruptcy in the . . .months [thereafter] also [were expected to ] experience delays at the bankruptcy courts, which ha[d] been overrun . . . as debtors scrambled to file under the less stringent requirements of the old law” as 2005 was coming to a close.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/17/pf/debt/bankruptcy_law/

CITIBANK & U.S. CREDIT MANAGEMENT DOUBLE TEAM ME

In late 2005, my own credit management firm, U.S.Credit Management of Texas, went belly-up within two months of the 2005 Act going into effect. (Because that scandalous Texas firm declared bankrupcy and pocketed my money before the end of 2005, I was out of 8500 dollars that should have been used in that year to pay down my credit card debt with various creditors.]

By the way, I had HAD to contract with U.S.Credit Management of Texas in 2004 after Citibank had unilaterally lowered my credit limit arbitrarily—i.e. without contacting me at all— in winter/spring of the year before (2003) and then began to charge me penalties for their fraud.

NOTE: YES, I TOOK my claim against Citibank to the ATTORNEY GENERALS of TEXAS, Florida, New York, South Dakota, Kansas, and the USA. All of them agreed that what Citibank had done was unfair but they did not even slap them with a fine. Such was the pro-business, pro-banker and pro-fraud Washington climate during the 108th and 109th Congress.

Citibank did worse than this to me, though.

Apparently in 2006, Citibank decided it wasn’t going to get the fraudulent money back from me under the eyes of various attorney generals, so it sold my debt to a bottom feeder credit collection agency. I will collect Bottom Feeder No. 1. However, before undertaking this sale (involving probably pennies on the dollar), Citibank (1) added more fraudulent penalties to my total and (2) created still other fictitious debt for me on credit cards which I had closed out in the late 1990s.

Next, Bottom-feeder No. 1 contacts me and wants to make a deal. I give them 500 dollars and then they refuse to make a deal.

NO MORE DEALING WITH BOTTOM FEEDING CREDIT COLLECTORS

After that, I decided not to deal with these bottom feeding credit sharks at all. Alas, THAT DEBT was sold to Bottom Feeder #2, who then contacted my mother the next year saying she “could pay off my debt at a reduced amount if she sent in 1000 dollars”. She did this without contacting me. Then that Bottom feeder Credit Collector #2 upped its demands.

I told mom never to give these irrreputable firms any money–till they immediately negotiate away all penalites and the fraudulant charges first— i.e. prior to making an offer to settle my debt.
That credit collector has now sold the debt of mine from Citibank on to another, Bottom Feeder No. 3.
Now, my debt from Citibank has been sold for a third. Again, this January 2011, these new fraudulent bottom feeding (so-called) credit collectors have been brazenly calling my mother once a week. This particular Credit Collector (Bottom Feeder #3) is still harrassing my family in the USA—even though I live and work in Taiwan.

This is all being done on the back of Citibank’s fraudulent charges dating to 2003 and earlier. It has been made possible by the “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”, which bankrupted U.S. Credit Management and has emboldened Citibank and others to make money off debt, which they should have fairly negotiated downward years ago.

I have written the 3rd Bottom Feeder from Taiwan two times already and asked that they stop harrassing my family.

They continue to harrass my mother and family with phone calls.

Please, 112th Congress, repeal that slavery-creating “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” before our grand children are enslaved by the foibles of the 109th congress.