When Obama proposed his credit card regulations, economic theory predicted what would happen: harm those with less than perfect credit scores (primarily the poor). Bryan Caplan, professor of economics at George Mason University, explained it best when he wrote:

” When you make lending to high-risk people less attractive, the result is not worse terms for low-risk people who have been profitable all along. The result is that high-risk people get less credit. They used to be able to get credit despite their credit-unworthiness by paying extra; if the law forbids this, why lend to them?”

How did this prediction fare with reality? Very well, according to this Yahoo Finance article:

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 made that credit more expensive.

The only way this bill makes sense is in assuming that regulators, centered in Washington, know more about the cost/benefit analysis of the poor than the poor themselves do. An assumption that comes easy to politicians and technocrats in Washington.