Category: Debt

Debt

National accounts: Households using up savings as interest bills skyrocket

Pandemic-era savings have been eroded by rising interest rates.

Remember 1992 the  CBA ads “Which Bank?” It was advertising regarded as unneeded irresponsible marketing of DEBT and it was told to stop. Unrequired debt became the standard product for sale to Australia’s lowest 20% and middle 40% and sold for discretionary spending and the money spent flowed into the coffers of the top 20%. The debt accumulated by ordinary Australians was encouraged by the last decade of LNP policies but it was for necessities for an increasing number of families in precarious employment while at the top a minority were organized to invest in hoovering it up. Payday lenders grew like topsy and were even advertising on TV ready to lend to those that banks no longer would with bank money.

The LNP  almost looked socialist throwing money at QANTAS and Harvey Norman and cutting the taxes of those earning $180,000 plus while refusing to help those that really needed it. Unlike the ALP during the GFC there was no money put directly into the accounts of the suffering poor they could borrow and pay the Shylock price.

This isn’t a new cycle it’s one we’ve seen time and time again and Australia leads the world living life in debt and we create every opportunity for bottom feeders to create more. Who the fuck is putting all that coke up their nose it ain’t the bottom half of the nation at $300 a gram it’s the debtless and those that debt don’t even touch the sides. There is a system in place that encourages the debt cycle to flourish and increase again and again..

ANZ deputy chief economist Diana Mousina said pandemic savings were now being drawn down, and at the current pace those savings will be depleted by September

Source: National accounts: Households using up savings as interest bills skyrocket

Debt

Personal Debt Makes Workers Afraid to Strike

Since the late 1970s, strike action and union membership have been declining steadily in most Western democracies. New research finds that one key reason is the working class’s increasing dependence on credit.

Source: Personal Debt Makes Workers Afraid to Strike

Debt

How Private Equity Amplifies the Abuse of Predatory Lending – CounterPunch.org

Predatory lending is an easily overlooked business that has damaged communities of color and poorer people for decades. It traps borrowers in never-ending cycles of debt with high-interest loans on coercive terms. But when Wall Street private equity gets in on the predatory lending industry, it amplifies the magnitude of financial exploitation.

Source: How Private Equity Amplifies the Abuse of Predatory Lending – CounterPunch.org

Debt

The Second Hand Car – Credit Card Sharks and the Ordinary Consumer – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Money cannot disappear; it moves from one account to another. There is no money eating monster that digests huge amounts of liquid cash turning it into thin, bad smelling air. Indeed, no one can tell where these other accounts are but had I been in charge of financial policy and governance I would have applied the old saying “Follow the money trail” with vigour.

Where does this leave the person that requires cash at short notice and unable to buy such funds from a bank? Well, the answer is simple: being regarded as a higher risk, the borrower is forced to obtain funds from legal loan sharks in Australia. The cheerful franchises that offer money at incredibly high rates and would sell your children into prostitution or coal mines if the proponents of neoliberal free market trickledown theory had their way .

Next time I might carefully examine the many wonderful money laundering services that have become part of the Australian financial scene.

Source: The Second Hand Car – Credit Card Sharks and the Ordinary Consumer – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Debt

When Debts Become Unpayable, They Should Be Forgiven

Usary wa once a crime and it still is according to Islam. Debts aren’t created in Muslim banking partnerships and mutual risk are. Lenders invest in borrowers and share a mutual profit or loss but not interest. Which means if the partnership goes belly up everyone loses and the arrangement is void. The very notion of student loans and Western banking isn’t as much a service but it system of milking people in need.

For centuries, debt and indebtedness have had profoundly destabilizing effects on human societies. In the ancient world, rulers and their subjects had a solution: known as a debt jubilee, it involved a periodic, unconditional wiping out of debt. We need such a jubilee today.

Source: When Debts Become Unpayable, They Should Be Forgiven

Debt

How a Payday Lender Used Tribal Immunity to Get Rich Quick

Commodifying poverty, welfare reaping, and growing debt

American Web Loan was set up as a tribal lender, but a class-action lawsuit reveals who controlled the company — and made massive profits — behind the scenes.

Source: How a Payday Lender Used Tribal Immunity to Get Rich Quick

Debt

Congress Urged to Take ‘Immediate Action’ to Stop Debt Collectors From Snatching Relief Checks | Common Dreams News

“Congress must take immediate action to ensure that the economic stimulus payments feed families as intended rather than debt

Congress Urged to Take ‘Immediate Action’ to Stop Debt Collectors From Snatching Relief Checks | Common Dreams News
Debt, Uncategorized

Real Estate Rescue’s Dominique Grubisa: The dame selling distress

WARNING

via Real Estate Rescue’s Dominique Grubisa: The dame selling distress

Debt, Uncategorized

A 40-year mortgage means lower monthly repayments, but ultimately it’s ‘advantage to the lender’ – Business – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Sold sign on Queenslander-style house in a street in Brisbane.

Indentured Labor or Modern Day Slavery Keep them under contract and working without complaint. (ODT)

via A 40-year mortgage means lower monthly repayments, but ultimately it’s ‘advantage to the lender’ – Business – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Capitalism, Debt, Finance

Lenders eye pay day through automatic loan machines

In a multimillion-dollar windfall for pay-day lenders, automatic loan machines are popping up in suburban shopping centres, allowing some of Australia’s most disadvantaged communities to take out loans worth thousands of dollars with their bank cards.

Many short-term credit contracts can have an annual interest rate of 60 per cent, compared with up to 25 per cent for credit card cash advance. CashNgo charges a 20 per cent fee and 4 per cent monthly interest.

via Lenders eye pay day through automatic loan machines

Debt

Budget on borrowed time | The Monthly

As the ABC’s business editor, Ian Verrender, writes today, the bigger problem for Australia is private debt: “While our government debt is still relatively manageable, our private sector debt and particularly that of households, is not. It recently shot to $2.466 trillion, almost 200 per cent of disposable income, amongst the highest in the world”. Verrender warns that the Australian economy remains tepid, and highly vulnerable to a slowdown in China. Recovering revenue, not spending restraint, has brought the deficit back towards surplus. No matter how much good news the treasurer has for us tomorrow, Australia can hardly afford to pop the champagne corks.

via Budget on borrowed time | The Monthly

Debt

Thousands of US Citizens Jailed Over Debts as Small as US$28 | Informed Comment

State Dept Launches ‘Free the Press’ Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter

Despite the fact that debtors’ prisons were eliminated from the civil system in the mid-1800’s, hundreds of African-American and people of Latin American descent wind up in prison with U.S. Marshals citing bounced checks, unpaid water bills or student loans as they are carted off to the nearest federal institution.

via Thousands of US Citizens Jailed Over Debts as Small as US$28 | Informed Comment

Debt

Bank for International Settlements sends warning with Australian household debt at all-time high

The BIS has warned that Australian households are among the most vulnerable to a sharp rise in global interest rates.

Source: Bank for International Settlements sends warning with Australian household debt at all-time high

Debt

Government debt versus household debt: ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ debt explained

We are in the grip of a mass delusion and we have been now for 30 years or more, writes Dr Steven Hail.

Source: Government debt versus household debt: ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ debt explained

Debt

An Australian debt crisis?

We are addicted to private debt and those responsible for regulation have very little idea of what to do for the best.

Source: An Australian debt crisis?

Debt

Scott Morrison to lift credit limit as Australia’s debt hurtles towards $500 billion| What started with Abbott & Hockey.

Treasurer Scott Morrison, pictured in London this week, says the government is making progress in reining in Australia's ...

The federal government will be forced to lift its own self-imposed credit limit in the coming months as debt hurtles towards half-a-trillion dollars.

Source: Scott Morrison to lift credit limit as Australia’s debt hurtles towards $500 billion

Debt

University graduates struggle to find full-time work as enrolments increase, study finds – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

J

ob prospects for university graduates are declining, a new study shows, with less and less able to find full-time employment.

Source: University graduates struggle to find full-time work as enrolments increase, study finds – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Debt

How Government Is Turning the Entire United States into a Debt Prison

Source: How Government Is Turning the Entire United States into a Debt Prison

Debt

How can Australian households get away with the biggest debts in the world?

It is an extraordinary fact that Australian households shoulder the biggest debts in the world, relative to our incomes. But can it last?

Source: How can Australian households get away with the biggest debts in the world?

Debt

Choice and Truth: Jeremy Irons Has An Important Message About The Elites Greed You Need To Hear

Source: Choice and Truth: Jeremy Irons Has An Important Message About The Elites Greed You Need To Hear

Debt

How Australian households became the most indebted in the world

The results are in: Australian households have more debt compared to the size of the country’s economy than any other in the world. Economist Philip Soos reports.

Source: How Australian households became the most indebted in the world

Debt

Public debt is not the issue — that’s just a neo-con scare campaign

Source: Public debt is not the issue — that’s just a neo-con scare campaign

Debt

Skewed Courts Team Up with Debt Predators to Screw Nation’s Poor | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Courts across the United States are systematically failing poor and low-income individuals as predatory financial companies buy up large portfolios of past debt and then win profits by targeting vulnerable people who may or may not be responsible for the alleged delinquencies.

Source: Skewed Courts Team Up with Debt Predators to Screw Nation’s Poor | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

Debt, Imagination, Liberal Arts

Why Christopher Pyne’s Bill should be knocked back.

Tertiary education is risk it’s imagination it’s not a guarantee of a meal ticket. The Abbott approach to education guarantees debt but no job. The Liberal Arts are a risk driven by passion and need to be encouraged the drive us forward with their imagination. Those taking up the Liberal Arts  often never go on to be financially successful however currently they still have a facility in which to pursue their passion. Turning universities into a product market place will ensure only one thing debt. It wont ensure the availability of the courses or the students because of the increased financial burden.

In a world where who you know more than what you know still predicates professional success. Christopher Pyne is telling pork pies when he claims he is opening a doorway to meritocracy. Sure times have changed but not as much as you think. Reducing tertiary education to system based courses will kill the encouragement of imagination and the investment in  youth that drives us foward.

Science Fiction Writer Ursula K. Le Guin Movingly Warns Against the Dangers of Capitalism (Video)

“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope,” said Ursula K. Le Guin as she accepted the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th annual National Book Awards ceremony.

The fantasy and science fiction author “stole the show” Wednesday as she warned the literary crowd against the dangers of capitalism, which has turned writers into producers of market commodities rather than creators of art.

“We will need writers,” Le Guin continued, “who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.”

When her short speech was loudly applauded, the bespectacled writer thanked her audience, calling them “brave,” ostensibly for cheering her on in her scathing criticism of the publishing world despite the fact that the literary business constitutes the livelihood of many of those present at the ceremony.

And while the entire speech is well worth watching, the most poignant lines Le Guin spoke are the following: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.”

During the hard times we are facing and throughout those that the author herself foresees, let us never forget Le Guin for her passion, her art, her words and, perhaps most importantly, her truths.