Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

steveplace · on July 20, 2008

It's OK. The shovel I bought was a deal. I got no money down and no payments for 12 months.

davidw · on July 20, 2008

And now these articles are starting to come thick and fast.

ninguem1 · on July 20, 2008

Is the lady portrayed in this article supposed to be the average American or an extreme case of cluelessness? I don't know anybody who is in such a hole (or at least admits to).

yummyfajitas · on July 20, 2008

I have.

They are the same people who read The Secret (power of wishful thinking) (http://www.thesecret.tv/), believe in astrology and faith healing, but don't believe in the moon landing. They are out there, and there are more of them than you think.

jrockway · on July 20, 2008

According to their debt calculator widget beside the article, if you have no debt, that's the same as 24% of families. So while "the average American" may have a lot of debt, a quarter of us have none at all. (However, I'm not sure if that number includes all debt, or just credit-card debt.)

noonespecial · on July 21, 2008

Go to 7-11. You'll find plenty of them waiting in line for "powerball" tickets.

anotherguy · on July 20, 2008

27.7% interest rates. Holy shit :-)

But that's america I guess. The richer get richer by exploiting the poor. There should be laws on the maximal interest rate!

fallentimes · on July 20, 2008

Not true at all; wealth is not zero sum.

Additionally, there should never be caps on interest rate as long as the lenders are _forward_ about their effective rates. High risk people should always have to pay higher rates, otherwise no one would lend to them in the long-term.

jrockway · on July 20, 2008

There should be laws on the maximal interest rate!

There are; here's a google result that may be helpful:

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/ban02.htm