Edward Kennedy - Brazil 1985 - America: The Story of the US TV - Bernie Sanders - Dispatches TV - Suze Orman - Marshall McLuhan - James Burke TV - Geoff Mulgan - Michael Moore - Jerzy Kosinski - Billy Jean King - Brett Williams - Allison Tait - Raymond McHenry - Daniel Gross - In Debt We Trust TV - Jacques Peretti TV - American Underworld TV - Misha Glenny - Fraud: How They Steal Your Bank Account TV - Yanis Varoufakis - Alexei Sayle TV - Meet the Working Class: Hard Earned 2023 - Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard 2022 -
Five billion dollars! Five billion dollars to the credit card companies. That’s what this bill is all about. Where do you think it comes from? People who have gone into bankruptcy. Who are those people? They are the people that have the heart attacks. They are the men and women whose jobs have been outsourced. They’re the mothers, the single mums, who aren’t getting paid back in alimony and child care support; those are the people who are being hurt! Edward Kennedy
Santa Claus: What would you like for Christmas?
Girl on lap: My own credit card. Brazil 1985 starring Jonathan Pryce & Robert De Niro & Katherine Helmond & Ian Holm & Bob Hoskins & Michael Palin & Kim Griest & Bob Hoskins & Jim Broadbent et al, director Terry Gilliam
If you hold out too long, you could jeopardise your credit rating. ibid. guard
The credit card is the symbol of the decade. America: The Story of the US: Millennium, History 2010
By 1989 more Americans have credit cards than vote in elections. ibid.
What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the kneecaps of those who can’t pay back, they still are destroying people’s lives. Bernie Sanders
For those families struggling with the recession the end of cash actually spells disaster. Research shows that by sticking to cash you might save thousands of pounds each year. Dispatches: Beating the Recession – Cash vs Cards, Channel 4 2012
Big banks and the credit card firms are making big profits from this change. ibid.
It all started in the 1960s. A small rectangle of plastic sold to us as a status symbol. ibid.
The UK’s total credit card debt now stands at £57 billion. ibid.
The shift back to cash is not what the banks and the credit card companies want. Nor were they expecting it. ibid.
Credit card companies are jacking up interest rates, lowering credit limits, and closing accounts – and people who have made timely payments are not exempt. So even if you pay off your balance – and that’s tough when interest rates are insanely high – there’s a good chance your credit limit will be slashed, and that will hurt your FICO score. Suze Orman
The world does not need another credit card. Suze Orman
It wasn’t until I stood in my truth and told everybody that I had $250,000 in credit card debt. At that point, everything turned around for me. I had to reveal the truth about what I didn’t have, more than pretend about what I did. That was interesting. Suze Orman
Money is a poor man’s credit card. Marshall McLuhan
The credit card: this is you coded into that magnetic tape. James Burke, Connections s1e8: Eat, Drink and Be Merry, BBC 1978
What will happen when being in debt all the time is the normal way to live? ibid.
L’Oreal’s slogan ‘because you’re worth it’ has come to epitomise banal narcissism of early 21st century capitalism; easy indulgence and effortless self-love all available at a flick of the credit card. Geoff Mulgan
Nobody had a credit card when I was a kid. No-one had credit card debt. But these big companies and banks wanted to know how to get more money out of people – get them charging things. Michael Moore
Banks introduced the instalment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States. Jerzy Kosinski
In 1973, a woman could not get a credit card without her husband or father or a male signing off on it. Billie Jean King
Credit cards act to obscure, reproduce, and exacerbate divisions of class, race, and gender by creating a credit relationship in which individuals and banks are paired in a patronizing, asymmetrical economy of debt. The illusion of choice and our own feelings of complicity hide the fact that debt is embodied domination, that the purpose of consumer credit is to keep you in debt perpetuity. You are not supposed to be able to pay enough to escape debt, but you are supposed to pay interest on time or be disciplined by higher interest, penalties, fees, and harping, dunning, threats, and infantilizing phone calls. Brett Williams, Debt for Sale
The thing about credit cards is that they assume an importance in our lives that takes them far beyond an innocuous piece of plastic in our wallet, directly to the heart of the way we live. For some of us, they’re all about convenience; just another way to conduct financial transactions. These convenience-seekers use credit cards at will, pay them off each month and reap the rewards points. For these people, plastic is fantastic. For a large proportion of us, however, credit cards are the way we fill the gap between the lifestyle we can afford and the lifestyle we actually live. To these people, a credit card is a ‘frenemy’, loved and hated in equal measure. The trouble is that once you get used to the idea of supplementing your income with someone else’s cash, it becomes a difficult habit to break. So we love the card for its access to what we think of as ‘life’, but hate it because those bills roll around with monotonous regularity, reminding us of our excesses. Allison Tait, Credit Card Stressbusters
The fact is, nearly 75 percent of Americans who use credit cards make only the minimum payment each month. At that rate (minimum payments) you could spend the next thirty years paying back a $3,000 credit card debt and give the financial institution $8,000 worth of interest. It’s the principle of compound interest in reverse. Raymond McHenry, McHenry’s Quips, Quotes and Other Notes
The credit card system as a whole is a huge threat to our freedom. But the really great threat isn’t so much these corporations as our nonchalance in the face of the power they have over us. It’s our indifference, our negligence, our ignorance, that gives them their power and makes them dangerous to us. Daniel Gross, computer database specialist
A church in Norfolk, Virginia, holds debt revivals – individuals with large debts are selected – and then donations from parishioners pay off those debts. The church members then destroy their credit cards. Danny Schechter, In Debt We Trust ***** PSTV 2006
I pledge allegiance to the card of the United States of Credit. One nation under debt with bankruptcies, late fees and high interest for all. ibid.
Can we even live without credit cards? ibid.
The idea of credit used to be so simple. ibid.
The Marketing Machine: In 2005 the top ten credit card companies spent over two billion dollars on advertising and marketing. ibid.
Making Priceless Commercials: Tens of Millions
Making A Film About Credit Card Abuses: Tens of Thousands.
Getting Hooked On Credit Cards: Overpriced.
Creating Awareness Of The Problem: Priceless.
There are some thing money can’t buy
For everything else, there is 29% interest. ibid.
Tamara Draut of the DEMOS think-tank says that while financial education can help some people it’s not the answer because credit card debt which has tripled since the 1990s is a symptom of other changes in the economy that it’s rarely connected to. ibid.
Home owners withdrew $600 billion in 2005 in equity for credit card bills and personal spending. ibid.
I am very popular here in eastern Europe. I am very proud to say that I was the first Brit to get a Lithuanian visa. What a bloody useless credit card that was. The All New Alexei Sayle Show s1e4, BBC 1994