pinniped

At the end of the day, this legislation won't have a major impact on they way frequent travelers with good credit obtain and use credit cards.

We are obviously a very profitable segment: why else would the card companies offer us hundreds of dollars in benefits simply to accept their credit cards? It's because most of us go on to use the cards a lot, generating merchant fees. The few of us who churn heavily to game the system might get nipped in the bud a little bit, but given how much custom software development it would take to isolate points/miles churners (without nipping out the profitable customers simply attracted to points and miles) I can't imagine all banks being able to do this.

It's still insanely competitive. The upfront bonuses are going up, not down. I just bought bagels with my new US Airways card: that'll reactivate 57,000 miles I'd stupidly allowed to expire, plus put another 25,000 on top of that. I just bought 82,000 miles and a bag of bagels for $84. They're willing to sell me those miles on the chance that I might continue to use their card.

I don't think the sky is falling quite yet. The new law might remove a few of the most unethical practices from the industry, but it isn't going to radically change the industry.