The long chronicle of Debt part3

I speak from experience on this period because, during that time my job was to sell private label credit card programs for retailers. It was easy. With so many merchants in progress, competitors were forced to adopt this method of extending credit to compete. Once the market was saturated with card programs, retailers have begun to up the ante. They wanted to find a way to be different from the competition to attract businesses. They began to offer "interest free" programs on their credit cards. This led consumers to spend even more, because many of them operating under the misguided idea that if it is irrelevant, it is not really debt.

Initially, you had to make six or twelve monthly payments in order to obtain, without interest. So who has changed to three months without payment or interest, and then six months and, finally, some merchants offer a maximum of two years with no interest or payment.

Can you imagine what happened to the people who were susceptible to "The E Factor"? They spun out of control for some shopping with a first payments, such as twelve months, and then forget. For many, it was as if they had acquired the goods for free, until the day of reckoning came when they were forced to pay it all in one lump sum or over time refinancing, loans at exorbitant interest rates. Little did they know, they were mortgaging their future.
As the 1980s ended, I have seen credit costs unprecedented in my career. There were some days where we've been inundated with requests for a handful of stores in a city of average size. We worked overtime, sometimes on Saturday and Sunday to monitor and address this. We also wish to participate in sales promotion and to provide on-site financing, with our representatives on site, requests from buyers to take until midnight so that sellers could spend more time on the floor their income. It was crazy.

I remember being horrified to find credit applications and credit reports for certain candidates. There were many, I recall, that are applicable to virtually all the stores in town. I could see where they had asked for a file, since it appeared on the credit bureau report. Whenever someone asks for a credit bureau report was requested, it's called an investigation. It was not abnormal or even twenty or thirty requests for information within three months on a folder. Also evident that these same people have begun to show signs of being overburdened with too many debts.
I knew that this trend in the loan, like all folly would end. In fact, I could see the end corning like a freight train barreling tracks.

Please contine reading part 4 (the last part)

Other part
The long chronicle of Debt part1
The long chronicle of Debt part2
The long chronicle of Debt part3
The long chronicle of Debt part4