Credit Card Companies Consumers in Debt

ABC News/Nightline interviewed two former employees that use to work for the credit card giant MBNA(Mellon Bank) Credit Card Company. MBNA was bought out by Bank of America in recent years.
Cate Columbo and Jerry Young both said that they were hired as Customer Service Representatives. They were put on the phone but not to necissarily help the customers with their concerns. There position was to “sell money”. This meant that they would push the envelope to over extend credit to the credit card holders and allow MBNA to increase the clients limits to the extreme. Columbo & Young said that they knew the clients could never repay back all of the credit that was extended to them, but it didn’t matter to MBNA.
Columbo and Young said their goals were set to sell $25,000 an hour, which translates to $250,000 a day, $1 million a week, $4 million a month. MBNA made big money on the interest paid back. “The problem is that credit card companies push the debt on people who really can’t afford it because that’s the profitable thing for them to do,” says AFFIL executive director Jim Campen.
Columbo says it was a stressful job that she hated. It was hard for her to feel good about over loading others with debt at the benefit of MBNA.
Bank of America says that the past practices of MBNA are not their company practices. The point is made though, that credit card companies are in the business of making money by charging interest. MBNA didn’t care if a client was able to pay the whole debt off or not, it didn’t matter. Their bottom line was that by offering more debt, they made more money off of the interest.
We need to recognize the evil of credit card debt. It is an ever spiraling down ward trend to pull more money from our pockets to the bottom line of the credit card companies and their stock holders. We need to focus on living within our means and paying off our debt as soon as possible and not fall into the trap set by large credit card companies.

Editorial Reviews

Two self-made millionaires reveal the secrets of their fantastic business achievements and personal fortunes. The Ultimate Entrepreneur’s Book does not rely on a mystical system but offers practical hands-on advice for turning ideas into money-making business realities. Richard Dobbins and Barrie Pettman provide a complete program for the ambitious entrepreneur or executive, from thinking creatively and setting clear goals to negotiating skills, leadership and liberating time management. It is illustrated throughout with great stories and personal anecdotes.

About the Author
Richard Dobbins and Barrie Pettman speak throughout the world on entrepreneurship and business success as well as consultation in over 100 companies. Together they founded a publishing company with no capital and recently became multimillionaires when the business was sold. Their ideas on wealth creation have been tested in seminars and lecture rooms worldwide. Richard Dobbins has been a Visiting Professor of Management on MBA programs in Europe, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and North America. Barrie Pettman has taught and researched at the University of Hull, the University of Rhodesia and the Canadian School of Management.

Provided by Charles Walter

This week Lorin continues with another visualization exercise designed to show that you can visualize and create the future that you want to have.

Here’s another good article from Robert Kiyosaki. Again, here’s someone who is telling the truth, telling it like it is. Capitalism is crumbling and it can largely be blamed on the “rich and politically connected”. He continues;”All the bankers and politicians have to do is wave the red, white, and blue, play a few bars of “Yankee Doodle,” and the masses get teary-eyed and pledge greater allegiance to legalized robbery.” He also recommends you read “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin. It’s a real eye opener to why this is happening and who is making it happen.

Read the article:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/richricher/109941

This is an excellent clip from CNN with Wolf Blitzer and Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas. Here you will find the best articulation of what is going on right now and how the government is about to make it worse. Ron Paul says that the government is propping up a failed system which is exactly what they did during the great depression. If the government let’s the free market take it’s course it will be a bad year. If the government does what it’s planning it will be a bad decade!

Watch it here:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2008/09/22/le.ron.paul.financial.crisis.cnn

Here’s an interesting article from about 6 months ago. It talks about “Credit Swaps” or “Credit Default Swaps”, a new kind of traded security. This is a good explanation of what is happening today. I also find it interesting that if you google any of the terms currently in the news regarding the financial meltdown, you will find article after article from months and even years ago that describe in pretty good detail what we’re experiencing now and what we’re about to experience. Try it. Go to google and search for terms like “credit swaps”, “economic depression”, “banking crisis”, “federal reserve”, “inflation”, and so on and so forth. You’ll find that the events of the last few weeks and months are no surprise to anyone but our government!

See the article here:
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1723152,00.html

This week's installment features Triton Willis who provides an useful insight into how to plan for those non-monthly and irregularly occurring expenses that often go unplanned for until it's too late.

Most people are intimidated by the stock market because they simply do not know how it works. The stock market affects our retirement and many other areas of our lives, yet there seems to be a lot of people who do not know what some of the basics are. Basics like what are the Dow Jones, S & P 500 and the Nasdaq. If you are new to the stock market and to investing it might help to think of it as learning a new language. Once you break down into its most basic elements learning it becomes a lot easier. Financial people as one financial guru put it love to take a 2 dollar concept and make a 100 dollar word for it. What I have attempted to do in this week’s conference call is take some of these seemingly hard concepts and break it down. Recently in the news we have heard a lot about the Dow. It has been extremely volatile recently. How can you benefit from knowing what the market is doing from day to day? By knowing what the market is doing this gives you a good idea of how some of you investments are doing. There are a lot of people that make the mistake of saying things like “my spouse takes care of the investing” or they will say things like my financial advisor takes care of my investments. Not knowing how the market works and some of the basics with investing you are putting your finances in serious danger. Now, at the beginning of this I stated that investing is a lot like learning a new language. That means that there are going to be a lot of new vocabulary words to learn. You can start to learn some of the most basic elements of investing by going to www.investopedia.com. There you can type in words like the Dow Jones and come up with a solid definition. There is so much information out there. There is really no excuse now not to learn at least some of the basics and then grow from there. Learning how to invest successfully in the market takes time and persistence but it is doable. Remember to start with the basics and grow from there. It can be easy to get discouraged if you are trying to learn too much at once. Find a pace of learning that works for you and stick to it!

Resources:

OptionsXpress.com
Investopedia.com
Marketwatch.com
Finance.yahoo.com
Moneycentral.msn.com