Okay, let me crawl inside the brain of a typical credit card CFO, who happens to have at least two Wharton MBAs more than I do. I may not convince you Arney, but I can at least try to give you an argument or two for why they they aren't enamored with the pay as they go customer.

Their rate of return on someone who pays as they go is 3-5%. On a $2000 average balance that's about $60-100 per month per customer. Billing and overhead eats into that revenue stream, lets make up a number and say its still $50-90 per month after expenses. If I as a customer make one phone call to my credit card company, maybe to ask a question, maybe to complain, god forbid I might want to avail myself of one of the 'free' services from my card vendor - I cost them at least $75, in direct employment costs and other overheard. I wish I could give a citation for this, I heard it on local radio - the average credit card customer is good for as many as two customer service calls per month. I might spend more than $2k per month, but can you see how the card company isn't wild about keeping me on as a customer, with the prospect of losing money on the first or second customer service call?

The whole point of retail lending is to reduce costs and maximize revenue - eventaully you don't want to have any personal contact with your customers, it costs you money - but that can't happen, not while there's still a big body of non-computer literate baby boom borrowers out there, calling 800 numbers instead of venting via email sent to intelligent responder systems.

Now a smart credit card company might want to keep me as a customer - I don't call them and cost them more money than they take in on my account. They can track that, and if they see my bottom line every month they know they can turn a profit on me. Having some customers with good credit practices might help them through the lean times, when more of their customers are defaulting on their credit card balances. But its unlikely that folks are clearing their credit card debt through bankruptcy, that was mostly eliminated under the previous Administration. But I'll stop there.