Originally posted by Flamingo
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I suggest to you that you were not 100% responsible for your debt, maybe not even 50% responsible. That you were/are a victim of an international banking industry that set out to get you to do exactly what you did. IMO the banking and credit industry absolutely have at least 50% liability for causing your financial problems that resulted in your bankruptcy.
I hope that a time will come when advertisements like the ones from AMEX and Discover, that actually make going deeper into debt seem glamorous and somehow, normal and expected, will be viewed as distastefully as the cigarette ads of the 1950's. Our financial health is compromised each time we see an ad on television suggesting a person get an AMEX card because his Visa is maxed and his girlfriend wants a diamond ring. The ability to care for our families is just as essential to our well being as our physical health and ads like this threaten our health.
Comparing a company advertising their big screen TV's to AMEX ENCOURAGING people to go further in debt by subliminally playing on our innermost psychological fears and desires is not comparing apples to apples.
Extending $70,000 in unsecured credit to a family of four that makes $60,000 year and has a $1200 a month mortgage is insane. How does that make sense? To say "you could have said no" is dropping the ball. We should be able to trust our banks, right? After all we trust the banks with our money, correct? They have formulas and equations they follow so they would not have extended that unsecured credit to us unless we could afford it, right? It begins to make sense though when you understand where money comes from.
If you haven't already done so, please watch Money As Debt by Paul Grignon. Here is a link to the segment 1 of 5. It is long, about 45 minutes total for all 5 segments, but so worth the watch.
With a basic understanding of Monetary Theory it is possible to understand that while personal responsibility may help one family in the short term, our monetary system is fundamentally flawed. Your time here, my time here is but a small blip, you know?
That crazy use of credit in the last 10 years is a result of deceptive advertising by the banks and CC companies. TV commercials like the AMEX ad in the jewelry store should be banned, but they won't be unless someone says STOP. We are a reactive, not proactive society. Commercials like that skirt violating the truth in advertising laws, but hey, we trust our banks! We all want our loved ones to be happy and the lies they are telling us are not the black and white kind, so we can't clearly see it...until we are sitting in that bankruptcy attorney's office. Then we are told, "hey, you could have just said no", as if we ever had a chance.
If we just sit back and say it was our fault for going crazy and using that card (that we shouldn't have had to begin with and we were subliminally coerced into using) the problem will continue. You, me, us here on the other side of bankruptcy may be able to look back and see where we went wrong, but I do not believe you, me, or anyone else on this forum could have prevented it at the time it was happening. We are up against international banking TEMPLES who make money every time you sign a credit agreement.
Once we all understand where today's money comes from and that each time we sign that credit agreement we are creating money for the bank, for a very small few to actually become wealthy, it will be easier to stop blaming ourselves (as the banks have tried very hard to get us to do) and look at the whole system.
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