The Borrowers
Unemployed stay afloat on credit
As employment benefits run out, more people are turning to credit cards to make ends meet. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.
Visa credit cards. (Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
More on The Economy, Spending, America's Financial Crisis
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Whether or not you subscribe to the belief that the worst of the credit crisis is behind us -- that is, that the banking system is actually getting healthier -- there are other parts of the credit economy out there worth keeping an eye on.
Personal credit, specifically. Car loans, credit cards, student loans -- that kind of thing. Marketplace's Stacey Vanek-Smith reports that the lousy labor market could wind up bringing us credit crisis. Part two.
STACEY VANEK-SMITH: Not only are more people unemployed. More people are staying unemployed. The number of people running out of unemployment benefits is at its highest level in decades.
And that's going to deal another blow to the economy: mounting credit-card defaults. David Robertson is the publisher of the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter.
DAVID ROBERTSON: When that paycheck goes away, decisions have to be made. Mortgages, car loans, etc. And the credit-card bill is mostly the one that goes by first.
Credit-card defaults have hit record highs. This year the industry is expected to lose around $80 billion. Still, economist Greg McBride says credit-card debt will not be the new mortgage debt.
GREG MCBRIDE: The numbers are much, much smaller and the implication of defaults on the broader economy isn't something that really even belongs in the same conversation as what we've seen in the mortgage side.
We owe about a trillion dollars on our cards. Compare that to the roughly $11 trillion we owe on our mortgages. But those numbers don't tell the whole story says Robert Manning, founder of the Responsible Debt Relief Program. He says these days people are using their cards for rent and food. So when they start missing card payments, it's a sign they're slipping over the edge.
ROBERT MANNING: While the outstanding amount of credit-card debt sounds very small compared to mortgage debt, it's going to expose all these other trillions of dollars in consumer debt that people may have to default on.
Manning expects a flood of personal bankruptcies this year. And, he says, that could have devastating effects throughout the economy.
I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith for Marketplace.
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From Boise, ID, 06/25/2009
I have a friend unemployed for 1.5 years. She had to use her credit card for car repairs and sewer problems. She has no way to repay the $1100. she just put on credit.
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