Banks warn of “economic disaster,” but the real disaster is the 30% interest trap millions of Americans can’t escape.

For decades, Americans have been told that credit card interest rates approaching 30 percent are simply the cost of doing business — a necessary evil to “protect access to credit.” But when banking leaders warn that capping rates at 10 percent would be catastrophic, it’s worth asking whose catastrophe he’s describing. Reduced access to high‑interest credit may actually spare millions from the debt traps that banks have profited from for years. If lending to high‑risk consumers becomes “unprofitable,” that reveals the real priority: preserving a lucrative business model, not protecting struggling families.

Banks insist that a rate cap would force them to cut credit limits or close accounts, as if this were a national emergency. But the real emergency is the number of Americans paying 25 to 30 percent interest just to stay afloat. When a family’s grocery bill or medical copay ends up costing double because of compounding interest, the problem isn’t too little credit — it’s too much predatory lending. Dimon’s argument assumes that people must rely on credit cards to pay for basic necessities. That assumption should trouble us more than the prospect of banks trimming their most profitable product line.

The industry also warns that businesses would suffer because consumers rely on credit to spend. But spending money you don’t have at 30 percent interest isn’t economic vitality — it’s desperation disguised as demand. A healthy economy depends on wages, savings, and stability, not on households borrowing from their future at ruinous rates. If restaurants, retailers, and travel companies depend on consumers going deeper into debt, then the problem is bigger than a rate cap. It’s a sign that the economy has grown dependent on financial quicksand.

A temporary 10 percent cap won’t fix everything. It won’t raise wages, lower rents, or solve the structural inequalities that push people toward credit cards in the first place. But it does expose a truth long hidden behind financial jargon: the current system works brilliantly for banks and disastrously for the people paying interest rates that would have been illegal in another era. When the loudest objections come from those who stand to lose billions in easy profits, it becomes clear that the real “economic disaster” is the one ordinary Americans have been living through for years.