This week a Gang of Seven law professors and sociologists started a new blog, creditslips. (Upfront confessions I’m one of the Gang.) The topics are tumbling out pension reforms, medical bankruptcy, collecting from people even after they file bankruptcy and hurricane relief. Credit junkies who are regulars on Warren Reports will want to check it out.
The Center for American Progress ran a day-long conference on debt last week for SRO crowds. But the number one feature was that in four panels eighteen speakers, four moderators, two introductions and a governor to give the lunchtime address we barely scratched the surface. There was still plenty to talk about.
Take a look when the next Newsweek online appears. From the calls I’m getting, I figure there are more stories in the pipeline for major news outlets.
What’s up?
If we weren’t focused so intently on the conflagration in Iraq and the middle East, would debt now be our Number One news issue? The history-setting elements are all around us: homeowners who can’t pay for their homes, credit card bills that now outstrip several months income, total debt loads that exceed annual income all coupled with an industry that faces little regulation (check out the 400% interest payday loans and the clear-as-mud terms of a 30+ page credit card contract, and check cashing practices that increase the number of bounced checks and fees).
Closely related to the debt worries is the Giant Risk Shift. The latest battle is on the pension front, with companies scraping off their defined benefit plans leaving it to the employee to save enough and to take the very real risk of outliving the money she has set aside. Unemployment risks? Watch for Jacob Hacker’s new book on the likelihood of getting laid off, and then take a look at how inflation has eroded unemployment compensation. The health front has made the shift in multiple ways tissue-thin, pseudo insurance that doesn’t cover hospitalization or specialist, the increased ease with which a person can run up $10,000 in medical bills, and the growing number of middle class Americans who cannot afford health insurance.
Decisions are made every day that have a powerful impact on middle class families. But those decisions tend to be quiet ones. Often they are buried in impenetrable court opinions or a company’s figuring out another way to fleece families while some government agency decides not to act. These decisions can’t compete for news space with body counts and bombs dropped, but that doesn’t mean that they are any less important. CreditSlips adds more new voices to those who believe we need to look at how debt is reshaping America.
