The Death of the Credit Card Economy
By Daniel Gross
Aug 30, 2008
http://www.slate.com/id/2198942/
It wasn't until Bank of America began carpet-bombing California with credit-card applications in the 1960s that the debt wave started in earnest.
In the decades since, consumer credit became so pervasive that paying cash became passé. Whip out that plastic. It was this behavior - the endless willingness of lenders to lend and borrowers to borrow - that kept the consumer economy humming uninterrupted from the early 1990s, straight through the brief recession of 2001, until the credit meltdown of 2007.
This shock to the system may further damage the already-fragile psychology of the consumer. Leverage is an appropriate synonym for credit because it allows you to lift more than you could with simply your own financial muscle. Take away the leverage, and the power lifter becomes a 98-pound weakling.
That's clearly a factor in the housing market. In 2007, according to the National Association of Realtors, 45 percent of first-time homebuyers put no money down, and the median first-time homebuyer financed a massive 98 percent of the purchase. But no-money-down mortgages, like Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidacy, began fading in late 2007 and largely disappeared in the cruel winter of 2008. No wonder existing home sales fell 13.2 percent in July from last year while new home sales plummeted 35.3 percent.
Internet Censorship Alert
Internet Censorship Alert: Alex Jones exposes agenda to 'blacklist' dissenting sites (March 14, 2010)
As I predicted, the Obama Administration is trying to shut down the Internet - at least the parts he doesn't like. Barack Obamas regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein has stated that he wants to ban conspiracy theories from the internet. Think about what this means - Every video, every website, every blog, every email, that exposes or just criticizes the government for any reason whatsoever could be labeled a "conspiracy" and taken down. Your home could be raided in the middle of the night, and you could be carted of to jail for criticizing the government. All they have to do is call it a "conspiracy theory".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAWmBLFodE
Monday, September 1, 2008
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