Posted on 04/17/2005 6:59:02 PM PDT by A. Pole
Long text but worth the time!
Bump for later read!
"We're a nation of debtors. Why do you think people left Europe to come to the United States? They left because they were in debt. We like to describe it as, "Oh, it was about religious freedom." No, it was about debt. They were looking for a way to escape their debts."
Only Frontline/PBS would be stupid enough to ignore vast amounts of historical eidence to make such a ridiculous statement.
"Absolutely. The consumer credit has been available in the United States for decades in many ways, for centuries, while we had usury laws. Sears, Roebuck was famous in the early 20th century for selling to people on credit to be able to boost its sales."
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There's a sucker born every minute----that's my theory on credit cards.
I've been using chsrge cards,now called credit cards,for 50 years and have never got in trouble.
What do the bankers and Senators think? They have a short horizon -- it is very gilded for them, but they have caged themselves more strongly imprisoned than we are.
Never boiled but nearso will we frogs be, yet a plague to those who in folly would snare the weak and injured.
Franklin worked as a indentured apprentice in Boston and fled to Philadephia before his contracts term ran out, iirc.
The British imposed the stamp and tea taxes on the colonies to pay off debt incurred in the French and Indian War. Our birth was in rebellion to onerous debt.
The historian's premise that we are at core a nation of debtors has good foundation.
My thoughts exactly. Only Georgia was originally billed as a debtors' colony; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Maryland were all religious enclaves.
man, don't tell this guy about payday loan places....
PBS Frontline. Yeah, there's an unbiased source.
My brother had a heart attack last year just before his company went under. Lost his job, insurance, almost everything but his house - and that only because he filed bankruptcy.
I think there ought to be an exception for catastrophic medical expenses.
Frontline plus Elizabeth Warren. Nice combination if you're the DNC. Warren worked for Kerry during the campaign. Bunch of Leftists. Pay it no mind
Bump for when I've got an extra 3 hours to read.
It does not matter if a person is left wing or right wing. What matters is what is said is true.
According to this article, it's only innovative entrepreneurs that declare bankruptcy....no wait....hardworking middle-class....no wait.....unemployed, sick people with marriage difficulties......no.....sorry...etc. etc. Make up your mind already!
Chap 13 is no profit center for credit card companies, which is where most of these folks will now go....it stinks for both the lender and borrower.
29, and I've still never owned a credit card. I get NO junk mail and I pay everything with checks.
25 or 40% APR? Needy committee member in my church came across a couple with two children, driving a junker they bought on credit with a triple digit APR. They had been paying on it almost two years, and balance had hardly dropped at all. Helped them out (replaced loan with a 0 pct loan). They paid all but last two payments. Recently died in a murder suicide incident. Debt burden was the least of their problems, but probably symptom of many others.
Credit card rates for subprime borrowers are substantial, but so are write-offs, and in general recessions, the writeoffs wipe out years of interest earned. People who use these cards (without end-of-month payoff) have unduly short time horizons. Make credit cards go "poof", they will STILL have unduly short time horizons. Pundits can call them "middle class" all they like, but in fact, individuals like this are on the road to indentured servitude. Recalls an article (in Harpers) a few years ago with a title something like "How I'm going broke on $100K per year". An expensive indentured servant. A university administrator wrote the article, if I recall correctly.
Prov 22:7
The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower is servant to the lender.
Get a snowballing number of such cases, as the interviewee predicts, and eventually:
Isaiah 24
1 Behold, the LORD makes the earth empty and makes it waste, Distorts its surface
And scatters abroad its inhabitants.
2 And it shall be:
As with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master;
As with the maid, so with her mistress;
As with the buyer, so with the seller;
As with the lender, so with the borrower;
As with the creditor, so with the debtor.
3 The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered,
For the LORD has spoken this word.
But that's the only part of the interview that I disagreed with.
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