America’s credit card crisis in numbers
In a facts round-up piece titled, House of Cards, Mother Jones confronts its readers with some numbers that illustrate America’s credit crisis. They include:
Americans owe $850 billion in credit card debt. The world’s 54 poorest countries owe $412 billion in foreign debt.
A “preferred customer,” according to one MasterCard vice president, is someone with a “taste for credit” who’s “willing to make minimum monthly payments—forever.”
60% of Americans have been in credit card debt for more than a year.
The average U.S. household owes $9,659 on its credit cards.
If you owed that much on a card with a 14% apr (the average interest rate) and made 2% monthly payments, it would take you more than 6 years to pay off—and you’d pay $4,922 in interest.
Nearly 1/3 of bankruptcy filers owe an entire year’s salary on their credit cards.
- Source: House of Cards, Mother Jones, Sep/Oct 2007 issue
