(no subject)
The heart of America has been credit for the past twenty or thirty years, at the very least. I'm a personal example of why...I couldn't have gotten my teeth fixed if I had to do it all on the $900 or so I make per month. On the other hand, I can pay it back at $200 a month and get the things paid off in ten months. Yeah, ouch. It's still doable, though. It wouldn't have been if my bank hadn't been feeding me more credit without so much as a by your leave during my first three years of college. My boyfriend, whose credit is about as good as it's possible to get when you're in your mid-twenties, was told he couldn't get financed for so much as a thousand dollars a month. For Pete's sake, he could pay them back in a month. His timing was just wrong.
The article I'm linking to from the New York Times (liberal media, I know, but at least people in the editorials aren't trying to call themselves unbiased) describes how the economy's effected a couple of businesses, and leads into why one of our biggest problems in getting going again is the current credit lockdown. Creativity's soaring, but without a little bit of trust from people who were eager to give away credit no matter what just a year and a half ago, we're going to stay in this recession for a lot longer than we need to. And don't get me wrong, until jobs are being created rather than cut and people who can afford them can go out and buy cars (or boats or televisions or houses or whatever) again, those of us who are on the lower end of the middle class won't be able to call rising stocks evidence that the country's finances are on the mend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13friedman.html?th&emc=th
(On a side note, I reccommend signing up to be able to read the article if it's required. You can use a junk email and 1234 as a password, but they've got some interesting things there.)
The article I'm linking to from the New York Times (liberal media, I know, but at least people in the editorials aren't trying to call themselves unbiased) describes how the economy's effected a couple of businesses, and leads into why one of our biggest problems in getting going again is the current credit lockdown. Creativity's soaring, but without a little bit of trust from people who were eager to give away credit no matter what just a year and a half ago, we're going to stay in this recession for a lot longer than we need to. And don't get me wrong, until jobs are being created rather than cut and people who can afford them can go out and buy cars (or boats or televisions or houses or whatever) again, those of us who are on the lower end of the middle class won't be able to call rising stocks evidence that the country's finances are on the mend.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13friedman.html?th&emc=th
(On a side note, I reccommend signing up to be able to read the article if it's required. You can use a junk email and 1234 as a password, but they've got some interesting things there.)