Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Major Problems Announced At One Of The Largest Too Big To Fail Banks In The United States

Posted: 08 Sep 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Do you remember when our politicians promised to do something about the “too big to fail” banks?  Well, they didn’t, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.  On Thursday, it was announced that one of those “too big to fail” banks, Wells Fargo, has been slapped with 185 million dollars in penalties.

It turns out that for years their employees had been opening millions of bank and credit card accounts for customers without even telling them.  The goal was to meet sales goals, and customers were hit by surprise fees that they never intended to pay.  Some employees actually created false email addresses and false PIN numbers to sign customers up for accounts.  It was fraud on a scale that is hard to imagine, and now Wells Fargo finds itself embroiled in a major crisis.

There are six banks in America that basically dwarf all of the other banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.  If a single one of those banks were to fail, it would be a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions for our financial system.  So we need these banks to be healthy and running well.  That is why what we just learned about Wells Fargo is so concerning…

Employees of Wells Fargo (WFC) boosted sales figures by covertly opening the accounts and funding them by transferring money from customers’ authorized accounts without permission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Los Angeles city officials said.
An analysis by the San Francisco-headquartered bank found that its employees opened more than two million deposit and credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers, the officials said. Many of the transfers ran up fees or other charges for the customers, even as they helped employees make incentive goals.

Wells Fargo says that 5,300 employees have been fired as a result of this conduct, and they are promising to clean things up.

Hopefully they will keep their word.

It is interesting to note that the largest shareholder in Wells Fargo is Berkshire Hathaway, and Berkshire Hathaway is run by Warren Buffett.  There has been a lot of debate about whether or not this penalty on Wells Fargo was severe enough, and it will be very interesting to hear what he has to say about this in the coming days…

Wells Fargo is the most valuable bank in America, worth just north of $250 billion. Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), the investment firm run legendary investor Warren Buffett, is the company’s biggest shareholder.
“One wonders whether a penalty of $100 million is enough,” said David Vladeck, a Georgetown University law professor and former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “It sounds like a big number, but for a bank the size of Wells Fargo, it isn’t really.”

After the last crisis, we were told that we would never be put in a position again where the health of a single “too big to fail” institution could threaten to bring down our entire financial system.

But our politicians didn’t fix the “too big to fail” problem.

Instead it has gotten much, much worse.

Back in 2007, the five largest banks held 35 percent of all bank assets.  Today, that number is up to 44 percent…

Since 1992, the total assets held by the five largest U.S. banks has increased by nearly fifteen times! Back then, the five largest banks held just 10 percent of the banking industry total. Today, JP Morgan alone holds over 12 percent of the industry total, a greater share than the five biggest banks put together in 1992.
Even in the midst of the global financial crisis, the largest U.S. banks managed to increase their hold on total bank industry assets. The assets held by the five largest banks in 2007 – $4.6 trillion – increased by more than 150 percent over the past 8 years. These five banks went from holding 35 percent of industry assets in 2007 to 44 percent today.

Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 smaller institutions have disappeared from our financial system since the beginning of the last crisis.

So the problem of “too big to fail” is now larger than ever.

Considering how reckless these big banks have been, it is inevitable that one or more of them will fail at some point.  When that takes place, it will make the collapse of Lehman Brothers look like a Sunday picnic.

And with each passing day, the rumblings of a new financial crisis grow louder.  For example, this week we learned that commercial bankruptcy filings in the United States in August were up a whopping 29 percent compared to the same period a year ago…

In August, US commercial bankruptcy filings jumped 29% from a year ago to 3,199, the 10th month in a row of year-over-year increases, the American Bankruptcy Institute, in partnership with Epiq Systems, reported today.
There’s money to be made. While stockholders and some creditors get raked over the coals, lawyers make a killing on fees. And some folks on the inside track, hedge funds, and private equity firms can make a killing picking up assets for cents on the dollar.

Companies are going bankrupt at a rate that we haven’t seen since the last financial crisis, but nobody seems concerned.

Back in 2007 and early 2008, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, President Bush and a whole host of “experts” assured us that everything was going to be just fine and that a recession was not coming.

Today, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Barack Obama and a whole host of “experts” are assuring us that everything is going to be just fine and that a recession is not coming.

I hope that they are right.

I really do.

But there is a reason why so many firms are filing for bankruptcy, and there is a reason why so many Americans are getting behind on their auto loans.

Our giant debt bubble is beginning to burst, and this is going to cause a tremendous amount of financial chaos.

Let us just hope that the “too big to fail” banks can handle the stress this time around.

Why Christian Zionism Is Vanishing in the American Church - D.T. LANCASTER CHARISMA NEWS

Many of today's Evangelicals have joined world opinion against Israel. (Flickr )

Why Christian Zionism Is Vanishing in the American Church

 8/18/2016 D.T. LANCASTER  CHARISMA NEWS

Evangelical Christians in the United States have loved and supported the State of Israel because they believe the Bible, take its prophecies literally, and see the modern State of Israel as a first flowering of God's prophetic promises to the Jewish people.

They have shown their love for Israel by placing political pressure on U.S. foreign policy and by standing up for Israel in the court of world opinion. Evangelical Christians have marched under the slogan, "We stand with Israel." It's a well-known phenomenon called Christian Zionism.

The Christian Zionist movement is the matrix from which much of modern Messianic Judaism emerged, including First Fruits of Zion.

All that is changing.

As the Millennial generation takes positions of leadership in the evangelical churches of America, we may see Christian Zionism and support for Israel vanish. It is a process that is already underway.

Today's 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds think of themselves as well-informed about Israel's role in the Middle East and its struggle with the Palestinian people. They are likely to feel strong empathy with the oppressed Palestinian people, and they unanimously join the rest of the world in condemning the State of Israel.

In reality, today's Millennials are only marginally informed on the issues. They know only the side of the story fed to them by a biased media and anti-Israel activists. Most of them know nothing of the real history of the conflict, the Nazi influence over Palestinian Arabs that sparked the conflict, the repeated attempts of the Arab world to annihilate Israel and the Jewish people, or the more recent history of Israel's attempts to establish peace with an unwilling Palestinian leadership.

Today's 20- and 30-year-olds have no memory of how Yasser Arafat threw Israel's concessions from Oslo back in the face of the international community while secretly funding and supporting an ongoing campaign of terror and evil. Today's generation of youth places the blame for Middle East unrest squarely on Israel. They are seemingly unaware of or unconcerned about how the Palestinian people and the larger Arab world maintain a constant propaganda campaign of agitation to terrorism, murderous incitement and hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric, which will insure peace in the Middle East only through the annihilation of the Jewish people (God forbid).

As a result, today's young evangelical Christians are far more likely to march under the slogan, "End the Occupation," than the slogan, "We stand with Israel." They are following in the footsteps of mainstream denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which sponsors boycotts on Israeli products and has published statements condemning the State of Israel for their occupation of Palestine.

The drift away from Christian Zionism finds inspiration from voices like Wheaton College Professor Gary Burge, author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians. Burge's teachings attempt to undermine the basis for evangelical political support of Israel. He challenges the theology of an ongoing covenantal status of the Jewish people.

According to his perspective, Israel forfeited that status, and with that forfeiture, they forfeit claim to the land of Israel. In the view of anti-Zionists, Israel is unworthy of Christian support because it is home to Jews who have rejected Jesus as their Messiah. Anti-Zionist evangelicals contend that support for Israel thwarts efforts to share the Christian faith with Muslims in the Middle East. (In other words, Christianity would be more attractive to Islam if we could present it to them as anti-Jewish and anti-Israel.)

Evangelicals who sympathize with the Palestinian cause emphasize the Christian obligation to show concern for human rights violations, but they fail to call upon Christians to stand up against the human rights violations that characterize the policies of governing bodies within Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel's enemies in the Arab world. Instead, from the point of view of the anti-Christian Zionists, it would appear that Israel is the world's chief offender in crimes against humanity.

An article in The Times of Israel titled "Evangelical Anti-Zionism Gaining Traction" calls attention to the concerted effort of anti-Israel activists to turn American evangelicals against Israel. The anti-Israel message finds warm welcome with today's Millennial Christians who have already bought into the notion that blanket condemnation of the State of Israel is a moral obligation incumbent upon every thinking, ethical human being.

The new evangelical struggle with Israel is not a new struggle. It is the same old struggle. For most of two thousand years, the Christian church has been on the wrong side of the fight against anti-Semitism and the wrong side of God's relationship with the Jewish people. Perhaps Christian Zionism was just a brief anomaly sustained by a generation old enough to remember World War II, to have witnessed the miracle of the birth of the State of Israel, and to have seen the revealed miracles of God's intervention that sustained the young state. 

Daniel Thomas Lancaster is a writer, teacher, and the Director of Education for the Messianic ministry First Fruits of Zion (), an international organization with offices in Israel, Canada, and the USA, bringing Messianic Jewish teaching to Christians and Jews. He is the author of several books about the Jewish roots of Christianity, the Jewishness of the New Testament, and he is the author of the Torah Club Bible study program. He also serves as the teaching pastor at Beth Immanuel, a Messianic Jewish synagogue in Hudson, Wisconsin.

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Bye Bye Middle Class: The Rate Of Homeownership In The United States Has Hit The Lowest Level Ever - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Bye Bye Middle Class: The Rate Of Homeownership In The United States Has Hit The Lowest Level Ever Posted: 28 Jul 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG The percentage of Americans that own a home has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded.  During the second quarter of 2016, the non-seasonally adjusted homeownership rate fell to just 62.9 percent, which was exactly where it was at when the U.S. Census began publishing this measurement back in 1965.  This is not what a “recovery” looks like.   All throughout the Obama years, the percentage of Americans that own a home has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.  The reason for this, of course, is that the middle class in America is dying.  Last year, we learned that middle class Americans now make up a minority of the population for the first time ever.  In order to have a high rate of homeownership, you need a thriving middle class, and you can’t have a thriving middle class without good paying middle class jobs.   This is why I write about the evisceration of the middle class so extensively, because the U.S. economy is systematically being hollowed out and most Americans don’t understand what is happening. Traditionally, owning a home has been a sign that you have arrived as a member of the middle class, but under Barack Obama the percentage of Americans that own a home has fallen every single year.  In the past, we have talked about how it had fallen to the lowest level in decades, but now it has officially fallen to the lowest level ever.  The following comes from CNBC… After rising just over a decade ago to its highest level ever, the nation’s homeownership rate fell to match its all-time low and could drop even further in the months to come. In the second quarter of this year, the rate fell to 62.9 percent, not seasonally adjusted, which is the same as it was in 1965, when the U.S. Census started tracking the metric. During the epic housing boom in the mid-2000s, the rate soared as high as 69.2 percent. That was when politicians touted the so-called “ownership society.” So why is this happening? Well, according to Wolf Richter analysts are blaming many factors… Rising home prices in an economy of stagnant wages (for the lower 80%) have pushed entry-level homes out of reach for many people. Lower priced homes in many urban areas entail a huge and costly ($ and time) commute every day. And even then, these homes may be too much of stretch for big parts of the population in expensive urban areas. First time buyers are having trouble saving for a down payment since they spend their last available dime to meet soaring rents. Millennials have been blamed. They always get blamed for everything. They saw their parents deal with the American Dream as it turned into the American Nightmare, and they learned their lesson early in life. The super-low interest rate environment hasn’t made homes more affordable because home prices, in response to super-low interest rates, have soared, and in the end, mortgage payments are higher than they were before. Higher home prices entail other costs that are higher, including taxes, brokerage fees, and insurance. Certainly all of those points are legitimate, but the truth is that what we are facing is much broader than all of that.  The middle class in the United States has been dying for decades, and in recent years the long-term trends that have been slowly eating away at the middle class like cancer have accelerated significantly.  Just consider these numbers… -In America today, nobody has a job in one out of every five families. -At this moment, 102 million working age Americans do not have a job. -According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of American workers currently make less than $30,000 a year. -In 1970, the middle class brought home approximately 62 percent of all income. Today, that number has plunged to just 43 percent. -The Federal Reserve says that 47 percent of Americans could not pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without borrowing the money from somewhere or selling something. -One recent survey discovered that 62 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. -If you currently have no debt and you also have ten dollars in your pocket, that gives you a greater net worth than about 25 percent of all Americans. -According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the authors of a book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States that live on less than two dollars a day.  If you can believe it, that number has doubled since 1996. -Back in 2007, approximately one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five. -Things continue to get worse for the middle class as we head into the second half of 2016.  Gallup’s U.S. economic confidence index just hit the lowest level so far this year. I could keep quoting numbers at you all day, but hopefully you are getting the picture. The middle class in America just keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and our politicians just keep on conducting business as usual.  They don’t seem to care that they are strangling the life out of what was once the largest and most thriving middle class in the history of the planet. And things could soon get much worse for the middle class as this new global economic crisis accelerates.  In fact, highly respected economist Peter Schiff believes that a major downturn in the U.S. is imminent… HERE IS THE REALITY: The world has caught on, and the gig is up. Under Obama’s stewardship, the U.S. national debt has gone from $10 Trillion, to what will be $20 Trillion by the time he leaves office, with nothing more than 100 MILLION Americans out of work, and 50 MILLION in poverty and on food stamps. That’s what cheap money bought for us. It was all “borrowed” cheap money too, making it infinitely worse, and the world is tired of lending. There are so many families out there that are really struggling right now, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track. I would like to tell you that happy days are here again and that the best times for America are just around the corner, but unlike the politicians at the Republican and Democratic national conventions, I am not going to lie to you. Very rough times are coming, and things are going to get much harder for the middle class. Plan accordingly, and get prepared while you still can.

Something Big That Always Happens Right Before The Official Start Of A Recession Has Just Happened - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Something Big That Always Happens Right Before The Official Start Of A Recession Has Just Happened Posted: 06 Jun 2016  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG What you are about to see is major confirmation that a new economic downturn has already begun.  Last Friday, the government released the worst jobs report in six years, and that has a lot of people really freaked out.  But when you really start digging into those numbers, you quickly find that things are even worse than most analysts are suggesting.   In particular, the number of temporary jobs in the United States has started to decline significantly after peaking last December.  Why this is so important is because the number of temporary jobs started to decline precipitously right before the last two recessions as well. You see, when economic conditions start to change, temporary workers are often affected before anyone else is.  Temporary workers are easier to hire than other types of workers, and they are also easier to fire. In this chart, you can see that the number of temporary workers peaked and started to decline rapidly before we even got to the recession of 2001.  And you will notice that the number of temporary workers also peaked and started to decline rapidly before we even got to the recession of 2008.  This shows why the temporary workforce is considered to be a “leading indicator” for the U.S. economy as a whole.  When the number of temporary workers peaks and then starts to fall steadily, that is a major red flag.  And that is why it is so incredibly alarming that the number of temporary workers peaked in December 2015 and has fallen quite a bit since then… In May, the U.S. economy lost another 21,000 temporary jobs, and overall we have lost almost 64,000 since December. If a new economic downturn had already started, this is precisely what we would expect to see.  The following is some commentary from Wolf Richter… Staffing agencies are cutting back because companies no longer need that many workers. Total business sales in the US have been declining since mid-2014. Productivity has been crummy and getting worse. Earnings are down for the fourth quarter in a row. Companies see that demand for their products is faltering, so the expense-cutting has started. The first to go are the hapless temporary workers. Another indicator which is pointing to big trouble for American workers is the Fed Labor Market Conditions Index.  Just check out this chart from Zero Hedge, which shows that this index has now been falling on a month over month basis for five months in a row.  Not since the last recession have we seen that happen… Of course I have been warning about this new economic downturn since the middle of last year.  U.S. factory orders have now been falling for 18 months in a row, job cut announcements at major companies are running 24 percent higher up to this point in 2016 than they were during the same time period in 2015, and just recently Microsoft said that they were going to be cutting 1,850 jobs as the market for smartphones continues to slow down. As I have been warning for months, the exact same patterns that we witnessed just prior to the last major economic crisis are playing out once again right in front of our eyes. Perhaps you have blind faith in Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve and our other “leaders”, and perhaps you are convinced that everything will turn out okay somehow, but there are others that are doing what they can to get prepared in advance. It may surprise you to learn that George Soros is one of them. According to recent media reports, George Soros has been selling off investments like crazy and has poured tremendous amounts of money into gold and gold stocks… Maybe the best argument in favor of gold is that American legendary investor and billionaire George Soros has recently sold 37% of his stock and bought a lot more gold and gold stocks. “George Soros, who once called gold ‘the ultimate bubble,’ has resumed buying the precious metal after a three-year hiatus. On Monday, the billionaire investor disclosed that in the first quarter he bought 1.05 million shares in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s biggest gold exchanged-traded fund, valued at about $123.5 million,” Fortune and Reuters reported Tuesday. George Soros didn’t make his fortune by being a dummy. Obviously he can see that something big is coming, and so he is making the moves that he feels are appropriate. If you are waiting for some type of big announcement from the government that a recession has started, you are likely going to be waiting for quite a while. How it usually works is that we are not told that we are in a recession until one has already been happening for an extended period of time. For instance, back in mid-2008 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke insisted that the U.S. economy was not heading into a recession even though we found out later that we were already in one at the moment Bernanke made that now infamous statement. On my website, I have been documenting all of the red flags that are screaming that a new recession is here for months. You can be like Ben Bernanke in 2008 and stick your head in the sand and pretend that nothing is happening, or you can honestly assess the situation at hand and adjust your strategies accordingly like George Soros is doing. Of course I am not a fan of George Soros at all.  The shady things that he has done to promote the radical left around the globe are well documented.  But they don’t call people like him “the smart money” for no reason. Down in Venezuela, the economic collapse has already gotten so bad that people are hunting dogs and cats for food.  For most of the rest of the world, things are not nearly that bad, and they won’t be that bad for a while yet.  But without a doubt, the global economy is moving in a very negative direction, and the pace of change is accelerating. Those that are wise have already been getting prepared, and those that are convinced that everything is going to be just fine somehow have not been getting prepared. In the end, most people end up believing exactly what they want to believe, and we are not too far away from the time when those choices are going to have very severe consequences.

Shocking Prophecies About America's Future - The Jim Bakker Show

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Lillie Knauls
Jim Bakker Show 2016 | Show# 2999 | Aired on May 21, 2016


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US Visa Website Fails to Mention Israel - Tsvi Sadan ISRAEL TODAY

US Visa Website Fails to Mention Israel

Monday, April 04, 2016 |  Tsvi Sadan  ISRAEL TODAY

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Topics:

America

American blogger Elder of Ziyon has pointed out a disturbing "sensitivity" of the "official U.S. VISA information and appointment services." Of the countries listed on this government website, Cyprus does not have a flag and capital city. This is probably an indication of the United States' displeasure over the island's division between Turkey and Cyprus.

Since this website is divided into rubrics representing countries, the rubrics separating between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv means that they represent two countries, but which? Since Israel does not appear on this list of countries, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem appear as some kind of unidentified, exterritorial cities.

If the removal of Cyprus' flag is an indication of Washington's disapproval with Cyprus, what should one think of the reasons behind the removal of a country's flag and name? 

The exposure of Hilary Clinton's emails, among them some that contain disturbing anti-Israel positions (one was even toying with the idea of a covert operation against the Israeli government), gave us a glimpse into the White House's true feelings toward "America's best ally in the Middle East."

Clinton's feelings toward Netanyahu's government, unpleasant as they are, are but one indication of America's displeasure with Israel. It would be unrealistic to think that she or John Kerry approved this visa website. 

Rather, these were administration personnel who instructed the webpage designers to hide Israel. If this is the case, then the separation of Tel Aviv from Jerusalem points to the consistent American refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. 

But how should we understand the removal of the country's name? Is this a sign of American displeasure with Israel's "occupation," or, as Elder of Ziyon suggested, is America, much like Europe, capitulating to Islam and accepting an attitude of "Western dhimmitude"? 

This may explain why Tel Aviv can be viewed by those in the State Department as just another occupied Palestinian city.

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When the Lights Go Out (Day 2) - Dr. William Forstchen on The Jim Bakker Show

Professor at Montreat College in Montreat, NC

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Dr. William Forstchen

Jim Bakker Show 2016 | Show# 2950 | Aired on March 11, 2016

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Credit Card Debt In The United States Is Approaching A Trillion Dollars - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Credit Card Debt In The United States Is Approaching A Trillion Dollars

Mar 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

For the first time ever, total credit card debt in the United States is approaching a trillion dollars.  Instead of learning painful lessons from the last recession, Americans continue to make the same horrendous financial mistakes over and over again.  In fact, U.S. consumers accumulated more new credit card debt during the 4th quarter of 2015 than they did during the years of 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined.

That is absolutely insanity, because other than payday loans, credit card debt is just about the worst kind of debt that consumers could possibly go into.  Extremely high rates of interest, combined with severe penalties and fees, can choke the financial life out of almost any family in no time at all.

These days, most Americans use credit cards for various purposes, and they can be very convenient.

And if you pay them off every single month, they don’t become a problem.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are not doing this.  According to CNBC, total U.S. credit card debt rose by an astounding 71 billion dollars last year alone…

Last year, credit card debt in the U.S. surged by approximately $71 billion to $917.7 billion, according to a new study from CardHub.com. The research also found that most of the debt accrued in 2015 came in the fourth quarter, when Americans tacked on more than $52 billion.
“With 7 of the past 10 quarters reflecting year-over-year regression in consumer performance, evidence is mounting to support the notion that credit card users are reverting to pre-downturn bad habits,” CardHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou said in a statement.

And as noted above, things were particularly gruesome during the 4th quarter of last year.
According to Alternet, Americans added more credit card debt during those three months than during the entire years of 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined…

Not since we headed into the Great Recession of 2008 have we been quite so loosey-goosey with our credit cards, racking up debt with stunning speed. Of our 4Q totals, CardHub notes, “during this one quarter, we added more debt than in 2009, 2010 and 2011 put together.” That brings dollars owed to credit card companies by each debt-saddled American family up to $7,879, the highest since the Great Recession.

I can’t even begin to describe how unwise this is.  When I was in my twenties, I made the same mistakes that so many other Americans are making right now.  I very foolishly racked up large balances on my credit cards, and it took years of extremely painful payments to fix those mistakes.

In America today, 37 percent of all households maintain credit card balances from month to month, and the average level of credit card debt for those households is $15,700.  The following comes from CBS Minnesota…

According to NerdWallet, 37 percent of American households have credit card debt, which is defined as not paying off the full balance every month. Using data from the Federal Reserve of New York, U.S. Census and its own poll, NerdWallet found the average balance for those in credit debt is $15,700.

What most people don’t realize is that by letting balances run from month to month, you can end up paying just about as much in interest as you did for the original purchases.

Here is one credit card repayment scenario that comes from NerdWallet…

For the sake of simplicity in calculating the cost of the average credit card debt, let’s assume an APR of 16% and a fixed payment. We’ll also assume a minimum payment of 2% of the principal balance of $15,762, the average as of the end of 2015, or $315.
Based on those terms — and assuming you don’t add any more to your credit card balance — it would take 84 months, or seven years, to pay off the balance in full. During that time, you’ll pay $10,402 in interest — about two-thirds of the original balance — for a total of $26,164. This averages out to about $124 in interest per month.

The scenario above assumes that all payments are made on time.  But a single late payment can trigger higher interest rates, penalties and fees that can be absolutely suffocating. In fact, some people end up paying back three, four or five times as much as they originally borrowed to the credit card companies.

If you use credit cards for convenience or to buy things online or to automatically pay bills, that is fine.  Just don’t let balances accumulate.  As you can see, that can be financial suicide.
And as we head into a new global recession, you definitely don’t want to be saddled with high levels of debt.  All of us have little luxuries that we can cut back on, and now is not the time to be living on the financial edge.

Just look at some of the troubling signs that we have seen in the news in recent days…

-The U.S. oil and rig count just dropped to the lowest level ever recorded

-One Houston CEO told employees that he was laying off that we have entered a “depression”

-It is being reported that 35 percent of all oil and gas companies around the world are at risk of falling into bankruptcy

-Unemployment in Canada just hit a three year high

-The number of job cuts in the United States skyrocketed 218 percent during the month of January according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas

-U.S. manufacturing activity has been in contraction for four months in a row

-U.S. factory orders have now fallen for 15 months in a row

-Subprime auto loan delinquencies have hit their highest level since the last recession

-Orders for Class 8 trucks in the United States dropped by 48 percent on a year over year basis in January

-The Restaurant Performance Index in the United States has dropped to the lowest level that we have seen since 2008

-Major retailers all over America are shutting down hundreds of stores

And this list does not even include all of the signs of severe economic trouble from around the rest of the planet that I have been writing about lately.

Credit card debt truly is financial poison, and it is not something that you want to have during the hard times that are coming.

Unfortunately, most Americans never learn, and they continue to rack up credit card debt as if there is no tomorrow even as the global economy starts to spiral downhill all around them.