The recession-era perp-walk: Credit-card execs slouch toward D.C.

eThere are probably people out there who lie awake at night, thinking about credit cards. They toss, imagining their tenacious debt entangling them like ivy slowly choking a brick house. They turn, fantasizing about the C.I.A.-approved techniques they'd like to see performed on the leaders of the credit-card companies. For people like that, next Thursday, April 23, is a day they're going to want to circle on their calendar. And it's not because it's the day their minimum payment is due.

In fact, it's the day that 14 of the nation's largest credit-card companies might be sending their executives to the slaughter -- or to a meeting with Obama Administration officials, which is pretty much the same thing. The Washington Post predicts the meeting will happen, and the prospect promises a fast and furious fireworks display, given the climate. If there's one lesson this fledgling White House has learned in its first hundred days, it's that it can't go broke with displays of outrage that companies like to clean out the wallets of ordinary folks. Suddenly, that's no longer acceptable.