Squeezed by the Financial Empires

Visa and Mastercard themselves now charge an extra 1% on all purchases made to merchants outside the US. The companies who actually retail to the cards - MBNA, Citibank, whatever - pass on that cost to us consumers, adding on an additional 2% fee of their own just to punish us for giving money to people on the other side of the Wall.

I'm out of the country a lot. Money must be spent on those occasions, or I starve and (worse) the materials I need remain out of my possession.
So last year I switched credit cards after being assure that the new one had no Foreign Exchange charge. But a year later after I took the bait, the company (MBNA) switched the terms of my card's contract. They have - twitching with patriotic fervour, one guesses - added a 3% charge after all, hoping to hide it in fine print.

I had trouble finding a card without a Foreign Ex fee, finally choosing one from Capital One. Capital One seems the only company that doesn't yet screw its customers in the above-described manner, so I suggest it to the rest of you who need to buy unAmerican sometimes. A number of columns on the web explain clearly that it doesn't actually cost the credit card company any extra to process charges made abroad; they add the fee simply because they can get away with it.