Recent congressional hearings brought to light a lot of bad stuff happening in the credit-card industry.
I was really glad to see those hearings trigger some favorable changes -- which I'll get to in a minute. The hearings also helped me understand the games an aggressive card issuer could play to its advantage. So here are some fair warnings about the games credit-card issuers play, and actions you can take to deal with them. These hearings followed a huge 114-page General Accounting Office report issued last year on the current state of the business. Without going into too much detail, the GAO found a lot of questionable practices and in particular took aim at the weak or nonexistent disclosure of those practices. Click here for the video version of this story from Jennifer Openshaw.



