If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The nation has crippling credit card debt to the tune of almost $800 billion. This is obviously not a minor problem, but a financial epidemic. Americans are paying so much in fees and penalties each year that we may never dig ourselves out.
I was terrified when I drove up to Massachusetts by myself in a 1996 Honda Accord. I was terrified when I graduated. And I was terrified when I moved in with my partner. But that terror will pass and fade into something more stable, more secure, and more exciting.
Professor Krugman keeps fighting a straw-man argument. The real issue isn't a choice between stimulus and austerity. After all, we've had nearly five years of quite remarkable monetary and fiscal policy stimulus.
The debate over fiscal responsibility has been muddled by the Great Recession; inevitably, perhaps, arguments over long-term fiscal problems have been conflated with debates over short-term recovery programs. Both debates have suffered terribly as a consequence.
Some call it the Student Loan Bubble -- I call it crazy. And what better time to discuss student debt insanity than now, as countless soon-to-be graduates prepare to slip on their caps and gowns?
Paying off loans doesn't have to leave you in a world of financial hurt, as long as you think ahead and find ways to pay them off early. Her Campus has tips to get you started.
Bob Kuttner has been among the country's most visible advocates of stimulus. His new book, Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity versus Possibility is his latest shot at the austerity gang.
The controversy continues to simmer around the Reinhart-Rogoff paper. The re-examination should go a step deeper and ask why anyone ever took their argument seriously in the first place. It's not just the arithmetic on debt-to-GDP ratios that tripped up Reinhart and Rogoff.
My dad recently passed away. He had one credit card in his name, with mom as an authorized user. Balance on the card is approx 10K. Is mom responsible for the credit card bill? What should she tell them?
I know what you're thinking: "The national debt never looked so fabulous!" But we the people of The Soup think the government is missing a huge sponsorship opportunity. Think about it: dollar bills are basically millions of little flyers. In other words, they're just unused ad space!
It all comes down to this, the U.S. government will not be able to service its debt once interest rates normalize, and that will be the sad truth regardless of what voodoo tricks Washington uses to report GDP.
Reinhart and Rogoff seem to be correct in one basic respect: Economic growth does seem to be lower in very-high-debt countries. But the entire debate over their paper's flaws begs the central question of cause and effect. Is growth lower because of the high debt? Or does cause-and-effect the other way around?
Rethinking and reforms are both taking place. But we still do not know the final destination, be it for the redefinition of monetary policy, or the contours of financial regulation, or the role of macroprudential tools.
We are wary of used cars salesmen, but how conscious are we of the fact that almost everything we buy is sold to us by a commission-based broker who wins when they convince us to buy more than we came to purchase?
I opened my credit card bill today. Yikes! It's almost $10,000. I'm stunned. How did I let it get so out of hand? I should know better. I'm in the ban...
When a Laney Walker supermarket closed in Georgia, the store had arranged for a local church to pick up all of the store's food to give to the poor. But when the church never came by, the food was unloaded into the parking lot where hungry people gathered to take it back home to their families.
