ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the United States (US) debtfare state has played a crucial role in both the expansion and the reproduction of the credit card industry. It describes some of the key features of the credit card industry and its relationship to the US surplus population. The chapter explores the rise of the credit card industry in the US by tracing three institutionalised regulative and rhetorical features: consumer protection, usury laws and bankruptcy laws. It examines how the debtfare state has facilitated and mediated several spatio-temporal displacements in the credit card industry. The chapter focuses on credit card asset-backed securitisation (ABS), the wooing of undocumented workers, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) and the 2009 Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act. Credit cards are an important feature of the flourishing poverty industry in the United States. But they are neither the only sector, nor the largest segment of the poverty industry.
