Minimum payments got you down? Thank regulators

I've heard a lot of noise lately about everyone's minimum credit card payments going up, especially those over at JP Morgan/Chase/WaMu (or whatever they're calling themselves this quarter).

I found a couple of nuggets from Treasury and OCC advising that banks were going to be expected to raise their minimum credit card payments over time to a level that could reasonably be expected to amortize the balance. This has been the requirement for commercial credit since forever, so it makes sense that it's coming to consumers.

Look here and here. These go back a few years, but we're seeing their effect now.

From a societal standpoint, it's a good thing if people don't carry their credit card debt forever. From an immediate default standpoint, and for what it is doing to the economy right now, it's not good. Bloomberg, in fact, just announced today that defaults are way, way up here.

I have friends and family who are dealing with this, and it's no fun. Especially with Chase, who's raised some minimums to 5% of the card balance. Wow. That's hard to keep up with if you're not used to it. Another thing, they're raising rates to reflect people's creditworthiness. So some folks are paying upwards of 20% this month when they were below 10% up to this point.

My recommendation: Get thee to a credit union ASAP. If you're credit report is clean enough, you should be able to refinance that credit card debt and pay it off before Chase starts coming after various body parts.