Is it time for a credit card?

Should I sign up for a credit card right now? If so, from where? I'm an unemployed college student. I'm due to graduate in May, and currently have no job since I'm a full-time student. (I'm looking for "real" jobs for when I graduate.) I'll delve into (much) more detail in a minute, but the basic gist is that people keep telling me I need to get a "real" credit card to build history, but I think now may be a bad time. I should also disclaim that I'm extremely contemptuous and distrusting of the credit industry. I believe that they, as an industry, have gone out of their way to exploit people with financial problems; I find it repulsive that they're exempt from usury laws; I'm yet to find a credit card company that doesn't engage in one sleazy practice or another. More than anything, though, I have major issues with credit reporting: I never asked to be put in a database with some random third-party group, and I think my financial data is the last thing in the world they have a right to know anything about. I realize that it's very helpful to banks, but that doesn't appease me. Not only is it a (creepy) invasion of my privacy, but I have major issues with them being the definitive word on whether I'm creditworthy or not. (It'd be like if I spontaneously declared that I was the "Job Rating Bureau" and kept files on every person in America, every time they've been disciplined at work, every place they ever worked, for how long, and also reported when people applied for jobs. And then, when someone went to apply for a job, the company would contact me to ask what I thought of them. Oh, and employees could only see my ranking of them once a year. And that's only because Congress forced my hand.)</rant> So I acknowledge that some of my reluctance is that opening a credit card is "giving in" and playing by their rules. But I also think it just doesn't make sense at this point in my life: - I have no job. I last had a job this past summer. - I have about $2,000 to my name. It's in a local credit union, which has also issued me a (Visa-branded) "check card," which works as both a debit card and an ATM. The money just comes out of my checking account. This works very well for me. - I have around $10,000 in student loans. I consider myself pretty prudent in this regard: they don't officially become payable until I graduate (and then I have the ridiculously long time they allow), but back when I did have a job, I worked on paying down monthly accrued interest and a small amount of principal. - My 2007 tax return was for about $7,000 in income. (I consider this quite good for a no-skill summer job, but the point is that current debt, technically, outweighs my annual income. Further, I don't even have the job anymore.) Also, I was turned down for an auto loan a couple years ago. (I had about $13,000 in the bank, and was seeking to buy a car for about that amount, but my mom convinced me I should try for a loan to build credit rating. So I applied for a $4,000 loan and was turned down.) As I understand it, applying for a credit card and getting turned down would hurt my credit further. I almost signed up for the Costco AmEx card, but this thread got me worried about AmEx's apparent obsession with putting accounts under "financial review" at inopportune times and demanding years of financial data. If your answer is that I should apply for a card now, I'm also soliciting recommendations for a company that doesn't seek to cheat me too badly. I should note that, because I hate spending money I don't have, I expect to pay cards off in full, so I'm actually not too sensitive to interest rates. I have no military links, so USAA is out. And thanks for reading this far; this came out to be a long one!