Given A Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

Given A Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

www.nytimes.com

While the circumstances surrounding these downfalls vary, one element is identical: the lucrative lending practices of America’s merchants of debt have led millions of Americans — young and old, native and immigrant, affluent and poor — to the brink. More and more, Americans can identify with miners of old: in debt to the company store with little chance of paying up.

It is not just individuals but the entire economy that is now suffering. Practices that produced record profits for many banks have shaken the nation’s financial system to its foundation. As a growing number of Americans default, banks are recording hundreds of billions in losses, devastating their shareholders.

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Welcome to modern day debt slavery, where the hole you dig is one you will never crawl out of.

I suspect this is going to get SO much worse in the coming months and years, as all of the exponentially surmounting costs of living, i.e. fuel, food, housing, energy just keep skyrocketing past people's incomes...

Sad when people are borrowing just to survive.

Lenders have been eager to expand their reach. They have honed sophisticated marketing tactics, gathering personal financial data to tailor their pitches. They have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising campaigns that make debt sound desirable and risk-free. The ads are aimed at people who urgently need loans to pay for health care and other necessities.

It is not just financial conglomerates that are profiting on consumer debt loads. Some manufacturers and retailers can generate more income from internal financing arms that lend to their customers than from their primary businesses.

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I am not so sure that it will get far worse than it is. I suspect that some banks will close due to loss of money or be forced to shut down due to lending practices.

Not saying many people will not get hurt during this ordeal but I don’t see another major crash like the one that added to the cause of the great depression. There will be a large number of people that will be affected by this but they will get picked up or helped along by some of the weaker banks so that they can grow stronger as well. Together both the people and the banks will build up investment. Then of course years down the road it will all happen over again but that is another story.

While I see a lot of gloom and doom stories nearly everywhere I look I also see human ingenuity working to grow stronger and make this all work out. Look at the number of people out there converting their own cars to battery power, or those learning to garden for the first time. People will survive things may change slightly for a short time but will eventually even out and I am sure new and better things will emerge due to what is being thrust upon the people now.

If everything was always great, good or even fair there would be little advancement in our ways of living. It is only when we are no longer in a comfortable position, do we find newer and better ways to get through life.

Raist

actually i have been researching this along w/ the federal gov't lately. we were slaves the day we were born. we are what they call "federal citizens" and all of this is a master plan to push us further into debt therefore securing (tightening) the bonds they have on us.

i had to fight hard not to puke the deeper i got into this. i feel sick that i have signed my kids over into "their possession" and am now searching for ways to get out of it. fortunately, i don't use credit cards, etc (i do have a bank card, but never overdraw; of course even this seems to have been a well thought out ploy when considering what our monetary system) so i am hoping that at least in that regard i will be able to manage my way out quickly. still am bonded by the papers they get us w/ at birth,

but i have been rather skeptical from the beginning of the whole "credit" system and just think that if i don't have it now, i don't need it. what ppl consider necessities today are hardly necessities, but ppl are so blinded by materialism.

this is all going to crash down around us and we're going to just start all over, aren't we?

what blows my mind is all the companies practically trying to SHOVE their credit down my throat everytime i check out of ANY store...marshall's, best buy, tjmaxx, ulta cosmetics, macys, you name it...from the large to the small. and not just their store cards anymore, but their mastercards or visas.

do they deny anyone?