The US consumer debt pile
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Payday loans, auto loans and student loans are overwhelming a sector of American society - what can be done to help them dig their way out of their debts?
Ed Butler speaks to Dean, a military veteran who says his debts wrecked his health and forced him into personal bankruptcy. Plus student Melissa says her inability to keep up with the interest on her student loans, despite working a well remunerated middle class job, is typical of her Millennial generation.
Such stories are becoming commonplace among the young and the poor in the US. In search of solutions to their plights, Ed speaks to Mary Jackson of the Online Lenders' Alliance, Harvard economist Ken Rogoff, and Martha Wunderli of the AAA Fair Credit Foundation in Utah.
(Picture: Senior man receiving bank debt documents; Credit: THEPALMER/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler. |
| 0:02.8 | Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.7 | Coming up, the punishing spiral of personal debt. |
| 0:09.6 | I used credit cards initially. |
| 0:11.8 | When those were maxed out, I either borrow from friends or I had to go to payday loans. |
| 0:19.1 | It's been like the valley of the shadow of death. |
| 0:21.4 | Yep, as consumer debt reaches a new landmark in the United States, we're examining the risks |
| 0:26.7 | and here calls for reform. Something's got to give, right? I don't know exactly what that would look |
| 0:34.4 | like, but they've gotten out of control. |
| 0:39.2 | The American debt trap. That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:46.3 | Ever since the global financial crisis, people have been talking about levels of household debt, |
| 0:51.6 | particularly among lower-income families in wealthy countries. |
| 0:55.5 | Take the United States, consumer debt reached $4 trillion in the US this year. That's the highest |
| 1:01.5 | total ever, although it's less in percentage terms than it was 10 years ago. The average American |
| 1:07.1 | adult has more than $4,000 of debt just on his or her credit card. |
| 1:12.4 | We'll have more on that later in the show. |
| 1:14.3 | But today we want to concentrate on that experience of being in debt, part of a wider focus |
| 1:19.8 | that we're taking on the subject for business daily. |
| 1:22.7 | Listen to this man. |
| 1:24.0 | He's a military veteran. |
| 1:25.1 | His name is Dean Ledbetter. |
| 1:27.2 | And his story sounds like a |
... |
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