It’s as if all the normal ways of borrowing have been exhausted, and now the credit-industrial complex is scraping the bottom of the barrel with manipulated reporting requirements and quasi-loans aimed at people who can’t access any other kind of ready cash.Pushing your customers right up to the edge of insolvency might seem like a curious business practice — until you remember that credit card companies earn most of their profits from late fees and interest on balances carried month-to-month. So the space between marginal solvency and pre-bankruptcy is the sweet spot for today’s lenders.For the Aristocracy, there’s another benefit: The resulting class of debt slaves is too busy scraping by to cause trouble.
