Some credit card companies - in the UK at least - specifically target people with poor credit scores with rates up to 99.9%(!)
And it's normal practice - but utterly perverse logic - to increase the rate of anyone who starts missing payments.
Debt collectors can get a court order to put a lien on property, and then get another court order to force sale of that property and repayment of the debt.
Of course the collectors bought the debt for some tiny percentage of its nominal value, so this is immensely profitable.
The outcome is that if you lend to poor people with poor credit scores there's an excellent chance you'll be able to secure a supposedly unsecured debt on their property and make them homeless, with a huge margin of profitability.
There are also ambiguous and murky connections between the debt collectors and the credit card companies which allow the latter to distance themselves from the harassment and aggression of the collection companies.
At the same time there's an incredibly toxic combination of wages decreasing in real terms, exploding property prices (both renting and buying), exploitative health care costs, constant ad noise promoting pointless lifestyle spending, and constant reinforcement of the belief that if you're in debt in a glorious economy of freedom and opportunity it's entirely your own fault.
It's a perfect storm of financial servitude. The credit industry is just one part of it.
Some credit card companies - in the UK at least - specifically target people with poor credit scores with rates up to 99.9%(!)
And it's normal practice - but utterly perverse logic - to increase the rate of anyone who starts missing payments.
Debt collectors can get a court order to put a lien on property, and then get another court order to force sale of that property and repayment of the debt.
Of course the collectors bought the debt for some tiny percentage of its nominal value, so this is immensely profitable.
The outcome is that if you lend to poor people with poor credit scores there's an excellent chance you'll be able to secure a supposedly unsecured debt on their property and make them homeless, with a huge margin of profitability.
There are also ambiguous and murky connections between the debt collectors and the credit card companies which allow the latter to distance themselves from the harassment and aggression of the collection companies.
At the same time there's an incredibly toxic combination of wages decreasing in real terms, exploding property prices (both renting and buying), exploitative health care costs, constant ad noise promoting pointless lifestyle spending, and constant reinforcement of the belief that if you're in debt in a glorious economy of freedom and opportunity it's entirely your own fault.
It's a perfect storm of financial servitude. The credit industry is just one part of it.