A Piggy Bank Failure?

This will not be a 1930's style bank failure, as lending intuitions understand the 1930's style solutions that got us out of the Great Depression, and won the first war in history where gold was considered so inessential to the outcome that gold mines were shut down by the government. Our no longer safe and conservative mega-banks have been socking away transferable credits, and thanks to the recent anti-bankruptcy laws pushed through Congress by the very best lobbyists big money can buy, they will not be the ones saddled with the debt of their never-ending lifetime, with no hope for a happy Social Security retirement coming out of a diminished paycheck.

No wonder GenX's obsession with cheap alcohol and in flipping real estate in a game equal in excitement to flopping the next card in Texas hold-um.

How do I think this all came about (you ask)? Are you old enough to remember when the Congress, and their IRS hirelings, no longer allowed a deduction on the interest—an astonishing 5 or 6%—paid on credit cards? We all thought, at the moment, oh what a check on the big banks, which had just expanded from local institutions to cross state and international borders.

The savior to a stressed American economy was the value of real estate. After all, the saying went—"yuk, yuk, they aren't making any more land." Overnight it seemed, thanks in part to ATMs replacing checks, and the failure of frugal Saving & Loans institutions through manipulation, and the fact that a home could be leveraged for a tax sheltered cash "home improvement" loan, those credit card balances started climbing. After maxing out one card with an un-biblical 20% rate, there was no worry as yet another company, based upon paper values, would offer a low 6 month rate to attract your business. All you had to do was balance statements by only paying minimums, which are reported to be rising.