Credit Cards

One of the major financial concerns for families across the country, even before the onset of the current economic crisis, has been an ever-increasing credit card debt pile.

I love Visa (NYSE: V). It's hard to come up with an example of a company with a more impenetrable moat. The enormous barriers to entry and near duopoly it shares with MasterCard (NYSE: MA) are a thing of beauty.

Better than expected, still pretty bad. That seems to be the case for most banks these days, and it was no exception for American Express (NYSE: AXP).

Last month, I showed how massive cuts in idle consumer credit lines could equal hell for credit card processors like Visa (NYSE: V) and MasterCard (NYSE: MA).