In These New Times

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Posts Tagged ‘credit cards’

The Credit Card Trap

Posted by seumasach on February 20, 2010

effedieffe.com

20th february, 2010
How U.S. Credit Card Companies Are Sucking The Financial Life Out Of The American Consumer

There have been very few things more damaging to American consumers over the past couple of decades than credit card debt. Easy credit has enabled many of us to live absolutely fabulous lifestyles, but outrageously high interest rates, ridiculous penalties and predatory fees have sucked the financial life out of millions of American families. It is very easy to blame the rapidly exploding debt of the U.S. government for the economic collapse that we are now experiencing, but the truth is that tens of millions of Americans have created their own personal economic disasters by overusing credit cards. The temptation of easy credit has been too much for millions of Americans to resist, but now all of that easy credit is proving to be incredibly difficult to pay back, and massive debt problems are literally tearing many American families apart.
It is hard to underestimate how devastating credit card debt can be to a family.

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Consumers Feel the Next Crisis: It’s Credit Cards

Posted by smeddum on October 30, 2008

October 29, 2008
Consumers Feel the Next Crisis: It’s Credit Cards New York Times

By ERIC DASH
First came the mortgage crisis. Now comes the credit card crisis.

After years of flooding Americans with credit card offers and sky-high credit lines, lenders are sharply curtailing both, just as an eroding economy squeezes consumers.

The pullback is affecting even creditworthy consumers and threatens an already beleaguered banking industry with another wave of heavy losses after an era in which it reaped near record gains from the business of easy credit that it helped create. Read the rest of this entry »

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