Credit-card execs, Obama to discuss "deceptive" ways

President Obama wants to crack down on "deceptive practices" by some credit-card companies and make it easier for consumers to understand terms and rate, administration spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday.

Obama will bring executives of credit-card companies to the White House for a meeting Thursday to discuss those issues, Gibbs said. He said he didn't have a list of the companies that would attend the meeting.

The administration is concerned about "deceptive practices that are involved, some of the outrageous fees that are charged," Gibbs said. "The president believes that we can increase the transparency involved and cut down on these deceptive practices and ensure that any system involving fees is done in a way that is fair."

A Senate panel last month approved new restrictions on credit-card interest rates that are broader than those adopted by the Federal Reserve in December, brushing aside objections from Republicans and the banking industry.

"The administration and, I think, the public in general would be happy" if the credit-card companies voluntarily changed their practices, Gibbs said.

Lawrence Summers, director of Obama's National Economic Council, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" program that Obama is "very focused" on "the way people have been deceived into paying extraordinarily high interest rates that they wouldn't have paid if they knew what that they were getting themselves into."

Summers said better financial regulation and efforts to block the marketing of "addictive" credit to people will help reduce the amount of debt owed by consumers. He also said Americans need to save more money, which will be spurred by government incentives.