subject: The Great American Credit Card Crisis [print this page] The Great American Credit Card Crisis The Great American Credit Card Crisis
By the middle of the last decade, a study conducted by employees of the United States Federal Reserve found that our countrymen had assembled a combined personal debt load of nearly two billion dollars between their secured (home mortgages and car loans, more specifically) and the unsecured lines of credit typically utilized by Americans in the form of credit cards. Ever since the Reagan administration of the early 80s decisively and dramatically diminished the role of governmental oversight of consumer loans, the men and women of our nation have had a harder and harder time struggling with the mounting monetary burdens as compound interest multiplies the values of the credit card debt balances.
Beyond the ideological slant guiding deregulatory passions, there was a clear economic advantage from the continued spending on goods to outpace the drop in manufacturing efficiency when compared to the foreign competition. Nevertheless, artificially spurring Americans to purchase more than their household budget would permit couldn't hope to balance the Gross Nation Product lever for much more than the four year expansion that inevitably resulted in the 1987 stock market crash. While several different causes led to the Wall Street crisis, many of the leading economic correspondents repeatedly cautioned the governmental authorities theoretically appointed to guide Americans through proper financial practices.
This was even more disturbing once the economic analysts turned their attentions to the plight of ordinary men and women who have somehow in just a generation lost the ability and even the desire to avoid high interest loans for little reason beyond consumerist whimsy; savings accounts, for these new citizens of the United States, may as well have been papered with Confederate money. In order to combat the corrosive effects upon the financial destinies of the increasingly uncertain bread winners, the local and national governments vainly trying to halt the steady leak scuttling the American economy have designed and are slowly beginning to implement resources that could substantially aid credit ravaged families in their yearnings to eliminate the debt balances altogether.
Unfortunately, aside from the Chapter 7 debt relief bankruptcy protection still potent but far from guaranteed for all but the poorest Americans who need not dither over the seizure and governmental sale of household assets there's no such thing as a quick fix that suddenly erases all consumer debt backgrounds. Even the Chapter 7 program, for the slim percentage of Americans whose past earnings were so meager as to raise the interest of bankruptcy trustees and whose cash on hand would be sufficient to compensate the legal advice now desperately needed for a triumphant application, could be more trouble than its worth once the federal agents have finished emptying the estate of Chapter 7 bankruptcy filers and liquidating the most cherished heirlooms for pennies on the dollar. Indeed, many borrowers have instead found that the most meaningful ploy left to the middle class debtors would be a measure of debt relief or debt management. Although the process of debt relief is brand spanking new and still far from understood by the members of the general public, the debt counselors essentially indulge a bit of legal blackmail in order to grind out savings from credit card bills that could be more than fifty or sixty percent off the top.
