Credit Cards Online Information

WITH 1.5 BILLION CREDIT cards floating around, $560 billion in outstanding credit-card debt, and negative personal savings rates, clearly credit-card debt in the United States is a problem. With a million-plus bankruptcies each year, borrowing has taken on a role far beyond traditional economic justifications of investment or income smoothing.

While Robert Manning acknowledges in Credit Card Nation that over-consumption plays a role in the mounting piles of debt consumers are shouldering, he doesn't just fault individuals. He casts a wide net of blame, including the marketing and profit maximizing practices of financial companies, Reagan's supply-side tax cuts, financial deregulation, an unstable post-industrial economy, growing income and wealth inequalities, and a shift in cultural norms from the Calvinist ethos of industry and frugality to one of competitive consumption and short-term gratification.

Manning's comprehensive approach to the causes of credit-card debt is far more compelling than the simple notion that aggressive marketing campaigns and solicitations alone have propelled the trend of credit-card-based lifestyles. While much of Credit Card Nation is devoted to exploring these causes, the book also relies heavily on characters who actually leave the reader thinking that this problem, in large part, boils down to a lack of personal responsibility.

There is Ron, painted as a victim of the leveraged buyout of Revlon. But somehow his swirling career path from postdoctorate researcher to private-sector chemist to part-time clothing salesman to stockbroker back to chemist back to stockbroker is not reminiscent of most people's experience of the 1990s. To blame the merger and acquisitions era for what appears to be a rather whimsical career track and the thousands of dollars in credit-card debt that financed the various transitions seems a bit of a stretch.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:16 AM