Young & In Debt [View All]

[Yavin4]

Excerpt:
BUT WHEN SIWY wanted some wheels, he turned to the most popular financing plan for someone his age: a credit card. He put a new $7,000 motorcycle on a credit card with no interest for a year, and he plans to pay it off before the year runs out. But if he can’t, he says, he’ll switch it to another interest-free credit card.
“I had to have a motorcycle,” he said with a grin.
Siwy is part of a generation of consumers who have embraced and used debt in a way that no generation has before. The polar opposite of the postwar generation, which feared debt, today’s young adults view credit cards as a welcome and easy path to the lifestyle they see around them.
“What’s extraordinary is how quickly it’s changed,” said Robert D. Manning, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of “Credit Card Nation.” “Now credit is an entitlement — it’s not connected to having a job and being a producer and understanding how much debt one can afford.”


Link: http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002396.asp?0cl=cR

Cheap debt is what's fueling this pathetic "recovery". Consumers have access to extremely cheap debt which is keeping the economy from totally falling off the cliff, but here's the down side. Next year, after the election, interest rates will start climbing higher and the cheap debt era will come crashing down.