Free Market Banking
September 16, 2003
I just ended a phone call with a representative from a credit card company. I recently signed up for one of their cards. The usual deal: zero percent interest until some distant future, transfer your other credit card bills. (L9)
During this phone call I was asked to verify some information and activate my card. I had already activated my card. (LA)
They then offered to send me a check for $X (many many dollars) as an interest free (for the time being) loan. I declined, they pushed, I hung up. (LB)
That $X represents my existing available credit with that company. So they get you like this: (LC)
- To compete they have to have 0% interest. (LD)
- So they then hook you into taking a bunch of money that many will think is free and clear but then won't budget for repayment. (LE)
- That distant future will arrive and much of that $X will still be on the credit card, subject to interest. (LF)
- The bank finally gets to make money, when they've got you by the curlies. (LG)
Bastards. This is the glorious (and obvious) result of deregulated banking. Mmmm, thank you very very very much. (LH)
The left behind folks claim these are the ends times, Christ is coming, prepare yourself, etc. These are the ends times, but not that kind. Empire USA is in the decline, our Rome will burn and when it does I'll be dancing. (LI)
Is everywhere else in the toilet too? (LJ)
Comments
Nah...Canada's doing all right...although it's kind of like living next to a couple on the verge of a divorce. Makes one want to grab a broom handle and pound on the floor yelling "WOULD YOU KEEP IT DOWN ALREADY!!" (M6)
If yer gonna come apart at the seams America, do us a favour and check yerself into a home first. (M7)
Have fun in Seattle... (M8)
It's the end of America because people should think carefully before accepting offers to loan money which sound too good to be true? I'm sorry, that doesn't sound like modern advice. It sounds like timeless advice. (NF)
The crisis is not the existence of such things, but their pervasiveness and the associated attitude. Sure robber barons and other usarists (?) have been hard at work for centuries but the tools available to distribute the noise and the size of the audience but things in a weird perspective. (NG)
In time of yore Joe Poor was working out in the field in the middle of Oklahoma or somewhere. Now he's at home watching TV, receiving his daily paper and electronic spam, highly available to the predatory advertisers. (NH)
I can't blame the advertisers though: they exist in an environment that we've all created and support. (NI)
When we give up on the hope of becoming agents of change in the world we become the victims of history. Events become percieved as being beyond our control. But it is clear in history that clever and committed people can alter the course of human events in sometimes decisive ways. (OO)
I just posted a comment on the ecosocialism group at yahoogroups. Someone was talking about how a depression would be good for progressives. This thinking is hardly new, I have been thinking about it for years, but recently I have changed course at least from an idealistic perspective (I still hope for the system to crash on a deep viceral level). I think it is risky to hope for such things particularly when creative and compassionate leadership within the progressive community is so lacking just as it is in the mainstream society. In other words in order for us dissidents to take advantage of a massive social collapse, we have to be economically, socially culturally, politically and most importantly spiritually prepared. (OP)
When we spend so much of our time hoping for things and obsessing about global events beyond our control, we have little time for the preparation of a proactive and not reactive strategy for transitioning the world into a post-industrial paradigm. (OQ)
What really makes us any different than those who worship celebrities? The problem with talking about politics and current events as most of us know it in America is that it is so beyond our control that it has become irrelevant (so yes the assumption that we can permanently change the world through organizations like move on doesn't cut it for me). Our obsession with not just hollywood celebrities but the lives of the rich and the prominent means that we have little time for developing viable alterantives to present practices that directly alter our own personal realities. (OR)
The success of capitalism is only partially due to increasing efficiency another important part of its success has been the retooling of social systems to encourage maximum consumption at all costs. (OS)
We live in a conventional world that despite claims to the contrary is more myth than reality. A made to order reality that is designed primarily for corporate culture and the professional classes that benefit from this status quo. The corporate media caters to various demographics. Each subculture has their own vested self-interests and acts to take more than it gives to the whole of the world. If each part of the whole takes more than it gives, how we can imagine any notion of a sustainable human civilization? (OT)
Externalities result from nearly every modern economic interaction. These externalities congeal around elite dominated modern systems like dried blood. But the blood is on all of our hands because although we complain about these systems we still actively particpate in them, buying cars, houses and various media--consuming within the mainstream culture. There is blood on our hands from the pushing, pummeling and crushing of the ecology into nice little bite size peices so that they can be easily counted, categorized and swallowed by the vast machine-like monolith of modern civilization that sustains modern progress, pushing nature ever further into more remote parts of the world. There is the blood of the toiling masses who do the work we loath. Then there is the blood of the future generations still unborn that is on our hands. What kind of future do we leave them and what kind of legacy do we leave for ourselves? (OU)
The problem with the idea that a depression will work things out is that it is based on the assumption that the political center of gravity will shift to the left. It could shift to the right, or the progressive leadership might not be ready to exercise the type of leadership needed to actually create positive social change because it has become so obsessed with looking at the problems. The result is an appearance of progressives not being committed to empowering the grassroots. We will not empower the grassroots simply by defining ourselves by what we are against. It is also important to develop effective ways of transitioning the world towards a benevolent system so that bloodshed is minimized. Developing a personal practice of healing from the wounds inflicted upon us by the world we live in and offering that healing process to others is the most significant way that we can become positive agents for change in the world. (OV)
Although we may be helpless to stop the massive wheels of history on a very personal level we need to ask: are we slowing it down through our personal actions or speeding it up? (OW)