As we noted last week, credit cardholders hit with recent and arbitrary rate hikes might get some relief if any of the new consumer-protection proposals see the light of day. But it’s of little solace to consumers today who at the mercy of credit-card companies, all of whom have the legal authority to start charging consumers with even excellent payment history three times the rates at which they started.

As of late, consumer issues have been of little note in the election, despite the fact that credit-card delinquencies are skyrocketing, college costs are out of control, and credit-card debt has hit an all-time high of $800 billion.

Bob Sullivan at the Red Tape Chronicles blog has done a nice job of sorting where the candidates stand on consumer issues. While Hillary Clinton says there needs to be a “cap” of interest rates on credit cards of 30 percent (which hardly seems like a cap at all), she does call for a Financial Product Safety Commission to review all lending products. If such an agency were in place five years ago, for example, predatory lending would’ve never been the impetus for a virtual shutdown of the global economy.

Continued: Click “Read more”Both Clinton and Barack Obama have somewhat negligible plans to reduce the rising costs of student loans, and each has a number of plans for sorting out the mortgage mess, though some of it mirrors state laws that have reduced the current spate of predatory lending issues. Still, noticeably absent from both campaigns is a focus on the import of creating revamped consumer rights and a commission for strictly dealing with lending oversight.

Also noticeably absent? A consumer-rights plan from McCain. “The basic instinct of the senator is it’s not enough to go in after the fact and trumpet a lot of regulations,” McCain’s chief economic adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, told the Red Tape Chronicles.

Instead, as if the current economic crisis weren’t enough of a clarion call, McCain’s economic adviser says the senator is taking a wait-and-see approach: “Maybe by January 2009 we’ll have done the right thing with our regulatory agencies. If not, (McCain) will fix it.” And how? Why, through “fair and open” competition.

In other words, a plan no different than his voting record of handing rights over to the credit-card companies.

Related: McCain on housing crisis: Answer is–less regulation?
Charging back: Will credit cardholders get their due?