Chapter Twenty
The "Screw the Consumer" Decade
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The noose is closing slowly around the American consumer's neck. Literally.
Surrounded by a stack of bills and her checkbook register, a pretty 18-year-old freshman at the University of Oklahoma hung herself in her dorm room. No sooner had Mitzi Poole begun attending college, then she began to receive a deluge of easy credit offers. Mitzi opened up several cards and began to charge away. But, when the bills came in, a powerful depression set in and Mitzi couldn't see a way out. Even though her debts only totaled $2,500, she decided that she couldn't cope with this newfound terror: credit card debt. Tragically, Mitzi didn't reach out to anyone. She carefully laid out her bills and her checkbook on her bed and then she ended her young life.
The well-loved mayor of a small, New Jersey town, David J. Dwork secretly racked up consumer debt and eventually destroyed his credit rating. His messy personal finances eventually bled over into suspicions of corruption (without any serious evidence ever found), but that was enough to lead the Mayor into despair. In an effort to spare his wife some of the distress, Mayor Dwork left her and his small town to deal with the question of what they could've done. Too proud to ask for help, he ended his life in his mayor's office at the barrel of a gun.
In 2007, a Tennessee appeals court decided that the MacDermid family could sue Discover Card for the death of Mrs. Nina Kay MacDermid who allegedly took her own life after being harassed and threatened illegally by Discover Card bill collectors over the course of several weeks. Mrs. MacDermid had a history of spending sprees and mental illness. But, this didn't stop Discover Card from issuing her credit and then relentlessly collecting. According to the case, the collections agents of Discover illegally threatened her with going to prison and other false threats if she didn't pay her bill. Reeling from the specter of her husband discovering her bad credit and inability to deal with her debts, she overdosed on sleeping pills.
- Credit Revolution: Path of the Smart Consumer
© 2007 John C. Heath, Esq., Dr. Randy Padawer, Jayson R. Orvis. All Rights Reserved.
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