New credit card laws take effect

Your next credit card statement is going to contain an ugly truth: how much that card really costs to use. Now, thanks to a long-awaited law that goes into effect today, you’ll know that if you pay the minimum on a $3,000 balance with a 14% interest rate, it could take you 10 years to pay it all off. “Jaws will drop,” says David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, a newsletter that tracks the industry. “I don’t doubt for a nanosecond that it’s going to give a lot of people a sinking feeling in their stomachs.” That’s not all that will make them queasy. During the past nine months, credit card companies jacked up interest rates, created new fees and cut credit lines. They also closed down millions of accounts. So a law hailed as the most sweeping piece of consumer legislation in decades has helped make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get credit and led to credit becoming more expensive.