Customer comments on this Youngstown Ohio Book
 Scary stuff
A great overview of the precarious state of credit we've reached and how we got here. Good lessons for all: policy-makers, borrowers, lenders, college students.
 A Morality Play?
Overall I felt that this book could have been, and should have been, much better. The ever-increasing level of credit-card debt is a real problem, as are the abuses of sub-prime lenders. But, the author's perception and description of the problem is often off, and the proposed solutions are inadequate.
The author offers a morality play in which the Merchants of Greed victimize both the poor and the middle class, while convincing users of convenience to think of themselves as more virtuous than the debt-ridden (even though their perks come at the expense of the less fortunate).
No doubt our ancestors would be horrified to watch us incur debt to buy a pair of shoes, fill the gas tank, or buy a restaurant meal. But, their horror would come from not from morality but from fear: in their time, mortgaging the farm often led to its loss, and mortgaging one's future income might lead to the poorhouse
Today there is a balance (which the author does not acknowledge) between easy credit (which leads some users to "max out") and restricted credit (which prevents most low-income people from obtaining a credit card). Speaking as one who lived for years on a near minimum-wage salary, I'd have to say that it was to my benefit to obtain a card, because (1) although I could not afford to own a car, I could occasionally afford to rent one; and (2) the Internet functions somewhat as Sears did 100 years ago in that if the local merchants charge too much, one has a ready alternative.
In this author's morality play credit merchants appear as the devil- and the devil's voice is advertising. Thus, welfare moms obtain bedroom sets they can't afford from Rent-A-Center because "it's hard not to succumb to the industry's aggressive marketing campaigns."
But, we're talking about adults, and there are alternatives. I did not buy entertainment products I could not afford and, when I could afford them but local merchants charged too much, I ordered through the mail (or,for more portable items, took a bus to a discount store). For furniture, I bought from a Salvation Army thrift store and hired a truck to take it home.
The point is not that I was more virtuous than a RAC customer, but (1) some people's lives are just too chaotic to plan more than a week or two ahead, and for these everything must be bought on credit because saving is impossible; and, (2) "have it now" and "it must be new" are very important values to RAC's customers. Government regulation cannot address either.
Regulation (the author's prime solution) can curb some of the worst abuses. For example, gaming commissions can forbid casino operators from locating ATMs inside the casino; payday lenders can be forbidden to roll over loans more than three times; credit card lenders can be required to set higher minimum payments (to shorten payback time).
Nonetheless, market forces and the creativity of lenders and merchants will defeat most well-meaning regulation. For example, Native American casinos can evade most state regulation, and the high price of credit is easily hidden in the price (or rent) of consumer goods. Indeed, rent-to-own was largely invented to evade state usury laws. Short of a government bureaucracy to establish maximum prices (and rents?) for everything what, exactly, would he do about this?
The author describes real problems. But, his insistence on seeing "Credit Card America" primarily as a morality play limits both his vision, and his range of possible solutions and remediations.
Revealing. This should be a wake up call to Congress
Dr. Manning is pointing out a societal problem that is growing like a cancer. Most of us are products of what we have learned from the media advertising about credit cards, and even the most educated believe the lies the industry propogates. Even members of congress are being duped. What isn't well known is the purposeful targeting of people who are headed for financial trouble, by credit card companies. In this book, and in a number of others, it is well documented that credit card companies and the banks behind them are seeking to profit from people on the edge financially by issuing them credit cards and coaxing them into financial ruin with false promises. They are squeezing the middle class families out of every dollar they can muster, through illegal practices such as issuing credit cards to minors. While other practices are extremely immoral and unethical, but legal, in their contract formation when issuing credit card agreements.
They are even now on the brink of skyrocketing profits from the newly passed Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, that will leave many needy middle class families without a fresh start. This will most likely increase homeliness, demand for welfare from the state, and utlimately a need for even higher taxes. Our leaders in Washington are ignoring basic economics, which is illustrated in Mannings U.S. Triangle of Debt. We have had a generation that fell victim to the illusion of wealth through the use of debt (or leverage) and are leaving the next generation with the bill. Our government, corporate LBOs, and consumers have all been duped by the banking industry. We haven't read the contracts we have signed, and now we are about to learn what is in them. Are you a trailing baby boomer and post baby boomer? Get ready to pay the bill. It is coming due.
This book looks at this problem from a sociological perspective, and though there may be some evidence that exists to prove it wrong, there is far more evidence proving that it is right on the money (no pun intended). From 1980 through the Internet crash in 2001, the macroeconomic trends simply cannot be disputed. We are all stretched too thin. Time will prove this book true.
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