[duke3522]

Article

This is the kind of stuff that will be happening at the beginning of the end.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')atherine Williams, a credit expert with Money Management International, a Houston-based financial counseling and education agency, said rising costs for gasoline and utilities were only part of the explanation for rising credit card delinquencies and increased consumer financial stress.

"People refinanced (their mortgages) six months or a year ago, so the 'house bank' is empty," Williams said. "Most can't go back and tap their home equity again."

In addition, she said, consumers can only juggle debt payments for a while. As she put it: "You let the car payment go one month, then the house payment. Then you make a lot of little creditors happy for one month, maybe for two months. Then it becomes obvious that you have to catch up on car payments, and everything else slides."

Williams called it "a dangerous strategy" because consumers who let accounts go delinquent risk harming their credit ratings. A poor credit rating makes it harder for consumers to get loans and can force them to pay higher rates on the loans they do get.

[ColossalContrarian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('duke3522', 'T')he middle class here in the US is up a creek without a credit card. The coming bad times will be a bottom up event.

[duke3522]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sabibaby', '
')Subtle war on the middle class… A lot of things are combining at once –climate/hurricanes, overdue earthquakes, peak oil, foreclosures/debt, imminent war in the mid-east, hell of a future

[presidentsherrill]

Thank God I am at the poverty level, I don't have very far to fall.

[pedalling_faster]

Amish-ness is looking pretty good.