While waiting fifteen minutes in the doctor’s office at around 14:30pm on that rainy Friday afternoon, I read the following U.S. News (March 2010) article on pages 28 to 29:
A New Era Begins for Credit Cards
By Rob Silverblatt | Posted: February 19, 2010
~But then the bills started piling up. “It was just too convenient,” says Riggle, who last year joined the crowd of Americans who have been driven into bankruptcy by credit card debt.
~But as a result of the recession, these fragile illusions of wealth have come crashing down.
~[…] credit card issuers used the time window between the bill’s passage last year [Congress’s Credit CARD Act of 2009] and its start date on Monday to preemptively raise rates, add fees, and cut back on rewards.
~It’s this feeling of trepidation that will prevent consumers like Jim Courtright, an advertising specialist from Chicago, from returning to credit cards. Until he declared bankruptcy last year, Courtright was, in many ways, the ideal credit card user. But after taking the strong line of credit he had built up over a lifetime of on-time payments and staking it to a business venture, he eventually got in over his head.
~So where does this combination of reluctance and disillusionment leave the economy? On one hand, the backlash against credit cards has coincided with a surge in the use of debit cards.
—
This is what happens in a country driven by capitalism. People get hurt by their own doing and sometimes by the misdeeds of greedy, fat cats. People try to survive for personal and business expenses. My line of credit is related to a failed business, of course.
Leave a Reply