What part of disaster do they not understand? What choice does a small business have but to then turn to credit cards for funding? If the government can bail out the big guys, how about putting up something for the small ones?

The dependency on the drug “credit” is more widespread than I initially thought.

The more I watch this ‘credit crunch’ debacle the more I am becoming convinced of the utter needlessness and harm involved in *any* credit entanglement.

What credit is, is a replacement for an enterprise having its own capital.

So this enterprise then involves a middleman, a creditor, who may or may not have what the enterprise has now come to *need to survive* … and/or may or may not be willing to provide it to the enterprise.

Sort of like a human becomes addicted to an opiate, and cannot even function without their ‘fix’. (And might one say that lately markets have been convulsing some?)

The use of credit to supplant what is otherwise simply prudent self-financing is a stupid, risky thing to do!

So as we now observe the credit markets in spasm – do we administer methadone-flavoured financial aid via State Handouts, or do we do a cold-turkey/hard-break and get off the Stuff?

I’d wager we, as a society, don’t learn the lesson … we won’t until the consequences become truly grave enough.

(Haven’t owned a credit card in nearly 20 years).
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The other aspect of the biggie US banks collapsing, that I’ve not seen mentioned, is: looking back was it such a good idea to let these banks get so big that the entire nation was now dependent on their continued solvency?

That too seems to be a needless introduction of risk to a nation’s financial stability. (Never mind that the few remaining stable banks are buying up the unstable ones, further exacerbating the concentration problem.)

I wonder if that issue will come up at the next competition-hearings, for the next monster merger.

The problem is that this implies the prudent must bailout the imprudent. It is worth noting that Michael Geoghegan’s the chief executive of HSBC (a bank who have had no bailouts) says state-sponsored bail-outs of western banks risk rewarding management teams for failure. Running your business with so little cash that you need to use credit cards quite clearly shows bad management. The credit crisis has been running for over a year and for management not to have taken steps to limit their exposure to credit being withdrawn is irresponsible. From a jobs point of view I sympathize with Meredith’s view but someone has to stump up the cash to lend to these businesses and that has to ultimately be the tax payer. Lets let our children pay the bill.

And all those business cards (and I assume the Amex products are the same) are guaranteed personally. Read the fine print. A real small business loan is not (or at least you can get ones that don’t require that, but again you need to shop and read fine print).

Just wondering- if the credit is in the name of the corportation, not the individual, wouldn’t they be in a worse situation in event of bankruptcty? I’m not a lawyer, but there is that ‘limited liablity’ thing, isn’t there?

Let the greedy big corp slimeballs rot in hell. Let their cronies sit in bread lines.

Don’t climb the corporate ladder. OWN IT!