December 17, 2008
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News: Beware of Americans Bearing Credit Cards.
What kind of shape is our credit card bearing population in today and how did they get there? It's gotten to the point now where 60,000 credit card holders have cried out to our government to do something. Economic conditions have been dismal in this country since Bush took office. Millions of pay checks have dwindled and even gone away during the Bush reign more shamefully then anyone remembers. As a result, the credit card market has become a major lure to a hurting peoples. The credit card industry was there to answer the call. They provided easy credit with very low overhead and nice perks during all the Bush years (synonymous with dwindling paychecks).
By last year, our nation of 300 million citizens had taken on a staggering almost 700 million credit card accounts. Because of the 0% interest promotions and low interest offers, our hurting nation naturally gravitated to the quasi-paycheck replacement of credit cards. Americans could continue their pre-Bush lifestyles using credit cards in good faith that the job market would, eventually, recover. Even Bush was publicly promoting our population to do this, stating that it was good for our country.
Obviously, we have been duped by our national leaders and now we find ourselves holding almost $1 trillion in credit card debt with absolutely no hope of the job market recovering during Bush's watch. But as our citizens slowly emerge from the turmoil caused by deception and corruption in government, they are coming to hate these traits in our leaders. All these abuses that never should have been, have mobilized our voting population to mistrust lies and even motivated borrowers to rethink their own paradigms of living beyond their means. Not since 1952, have we seen household debt on the decline and thrift become fashionable. Embracing personal savings is finally coming back in vogue and, as the CS Monitor's Editorial Board so aptly puts it, "…this Christmas, conspicuous consumption of expensive goods seems so un-Christmasy."