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Welcome & thanks for joining!
Here’s a Pop Quiz to test your credit
IQ:
Question: You up cut up your
credit cards on your 26th birthday. Owing $3,000 at an APR of 20%
you pay your 2% minimum. You’re never late. How much will it cost
you to pay off your $3,000 debt?
Answer: $16,000! And you’ll be 80
years old.
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DISSECTOR DEBT
BLOG
In Debt We
Trust Director Danny Schechter reports on the film and campaign.
Sometimes I just sit here, puzzling, on how is it possible for our
society and all of us to become so dependent on debt.
All the big deals on Wall Street are being funded in part by debt.
Example: Sallie Mae goes private and is sold to “avoid scrutiny” in
the spreading student loan scandal in which the company is deeply
implicated in getting college administrators to steer students to
their higher priced loans. The price for the company: $24 BILLION,
of which 16.8 BILLION is in debt. The Cablevision company is being
sold back to its founding family. Over 10 BILLION in debt is
involved.
CEOS are borrowing debt to buy back stock and in the process, just
coincidentally I am sure, use some of the money to hike their own
salaries
to obscenely high levels. It doesn’t stop as our mortgages are
bought and sold back into the market in so-called securitization
trusts. This money then leverages more speculative investment.
Meanwhile the money manager who looks after Dick Cheney’s finances
is warning that the whole world is becoming a BUBBLE that can burst.
And did you know that General Motors is deeply complicit in the SUB
PRIME LENDING CRISIS. I didn’t until I found out that what was the
world’s
biggest automaker saw its profits fall as the sub prime loans they
were doing on the side imploded. This little item was in the
Financial Times:
“General Motors’ first-quarter
earnings shrank almost 90 per cent, with improved automotive
operating profits more than offset by heavy sub prime mortgage
losses at GMAC, the financial services group in which the
carmaker has a 49 per cent stake.”
Hmmmmm...
Meanwhile and not un-coincidentally, The Motor city of Detroit, GM’s
hometown, has been named the FORECLOSURE CAPITAL OF AMERICA because
so many people are losing their homes as their wages drop and their
bills climb. Perhaps that’s why the Detroit Bar Association has
invited me to show
IN DEBT WE
TRUST, probably on May 15th.
As the Markets go up for those who can afford to play them, back in
the lower end of society where most if us live, the bills mount, the
fees rise and it is harder for us to pay them.
I am hearing from all sorts of people who are impressed by our film
IN DEBT WE
TRUST and are plugging it in their blogs, speeches and also
doing something about the problem,
Jeff Furman saw the film in Ithaca New York: “I will also
be meeting with the President of Tompkins County Trust Company
asking them to pull an ad they have encouraging people to take out a
home equity loan to do such things as take a vacation or pay for a
fancy wedding.”
Also in Ithaca, A Gomer writes: “I love your film. Plan on
having friends over to see it and am recommending it to everyone I
know.”
James Boodley, a minister, is trying to help us get it seen
in churches: “I wish I had the ability to contact all of the UCC
congregations in NY, but
I don't have that information. As a better option, though, I thought
you might send information about Mr. Schechter's video to the United
Church
News, a monthly publication of the UCC distributed to individuals
and churches across the U.S.”
Bob MacDonald saw the film on LINK TV and writes: “I just
wanted to tell you how hugely informative your debt documentary was
to me. I cut up my credit card from Penny's and wished that your
documentary will be shown a thousand times around the USA.”
Denise Richardson from Florida who wrote the must-read book
GIVE ME BACK MY CREDIT, the story of a consumer who was tired of
being ripped off and fought back, informs us she
put up our trailer on her website.
John Oswald writes: “Hi, we watched this show and felt
really alarmed. Could you please tell me the book titles that you
recommend reading in the
show?”
(John, for starters, check out Robert Manning’s
CREDIT
CARD NATION)
This is just a small sampling of the grassroots/ netroots response.
You can join these folks by
ordering IN DEBT WE TRUST and
organize screenings in your home, local schools and churches and
campuses. No one else is going
to do anything if we don’t get involved. You can share your
experiences by writing me at the media watchdog site I also edit:
Danny@mediachannel.org
I will be showing the film later this
month in Washington State and New Mexico. At the end of June, I will
be showing the movie at the Durban
International Film Festival in South Africa. We have been asked
about screenings in Indianapolis and St. Louis.
Incidentally, we know that everyone cannot show an 88 minute film so
we have three shorter versions which can be shown in classrooms or
meetings:
- 22 Minute: Focusing on Student
Debt Issues—shown at the Rochester Institute of Technology to
1200 students.
Click
here to watch it.
- 22 minute: WILL WE LOSE OUR
HOMES?—Focusing on Sub prime loans and the foreclosure crisis,
featuring material that had been edited out of the
film for reasons of time. $15
- 28 Minute: THE MAKING AND
MEANING OF IN DEBT WE TRUST—a promotional
video, free for community and public access stations offering
interviews with the filmmakers and Sopranos star Lorraine Bracco
who went through bankruptcy and excerpts of the film.
Please write to
sbkayser@globalvision.org
With your input, I will continue to
update our experiences and reactions to the film.
Danny Schechter
Editor
Mediachannel.org
Director IN DEBT WE TRUST
InDebtWeTrust.com
212 246-0202x3006 |
Get the film that started IT
ALL!
DVD $19.95
DVD+SOUNDTRACK $29.95
Join & make $$$
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Screening
Watch Student Loan Video
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SPONSORED ARTICLE
suggest your own
FOREVER IN
YOUR DEBT
Escaping Credit
Card Hell
By Harvey Z. Warren
The most critical part of resolving
your debt crisis is restoring your confidence in yourself. Believing
that you are stupid or that you have done something wrong and
beating yourself up for it will not help. It will only make matters
worse.
Realizing how many Americans were
unwittingly sliding into financial disaster, the OCC decided it was
time to apply the brakes to the overuse of credit by requiring
consumers to pay down more of their balances each month.
The banks, after behaving for years
like consumers had their credit completely under control and that
minimum payments were not a problem, were forced to recognize how
many of their customers were truly on the brink of financial
collapse.
On January 1, 2006, the 2% minimum
was raised to 4% by banking regulators who supervise the issuing of
consumer credit cards. The 2% minimum improperly gave you the
ability to amass much more debt than you could conceivably handle.
Consumers never do the math and, therefore, never understand that
they are spending themselves into life-long debt when they pay only
minimums.
The order to raise your minimum pay
to 4% in only now being phased in slowly and with great care. The
credit card companies have played a role in your financial crisis.
The reluctance shown by banking to quickly double your minimum
payment to 4% reflects their understanding of how many consumers
would not be able handle that increase.
Said another way, the reluctance by
banking to quickly double your minimum payments to 4% reflects their
understanding that a huge number of their “good customers” have
spent themselves to the limit and are hanging on by the skin of
their teeth… and the bank helped them do it.
Credit sickness has many warning signs, the most serious warning
sign is paying minimums for more than six months. Every month on
every credit card statement there is ringing credit alarm for you to
hear if you are listening. If the amount you pay equals the amount
suggested by the card issuer, you should be hearing that alarm. Like
one of those code blue emergencies you see nightly on television
programs set in hospitals, you should imagine men and women in
hospital scrubs running to your aid as your write that check paying
only minimums!
You are dying financially one
minimum payment at a time.
Harvey Z. Warren is the author of
"Forever In Your Debt: Escaping Credit Card Hell" (coming soon...)
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