[via cracked.com]

For decades, credit cards have been a means by which large banks have loaned money to poor people at interest rates approaching infinity.

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A Brief History of Credit Cards

Incredibly, the above isn’t an exaggeration. There are people in this situation right now where each payment to their credit card company leaves them owing more. Only in the last few years has the government moved to stop banks from putting people in this cycle of infinite repayment (where the interest and fees are more than the monthly payments).