{"id":27597,"date":"2017-11-03T11:44:25","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T16:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27597"},"modified":"2017-11-03T11:44:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T16:44:25","slug":"how-us-debt-slaves-get-trapped-by-deferred-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=27597","title":{"rendered":"How US Debt Slaves Get Trapped by \u201cDeferred Interest\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/11\/02\/how-us-debt-slaves-get-trapped-by-deferred-interest\/\">How US Debt Slaves Get Trapped by \u201cDeferred Interest\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>But over the next 2 months, they\u2019ll try to prop up US retailers and the entire global economy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Credit cards play a huge role in what the US retail industry hopes will be a <a href=\"https:\/\/nrf.com\/media\/press-releases\/nrf-consumer-survey-points-busy-holiday-season-backs-economic-forecast-and\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">$682-billion splurge<\/a> by Americans over the holiday selling season. Already, total revolving consumer credit outstanding \u2013 mostly credit cards \u2013 has reached $1 trillion, up 5.4% from a year ago, and will surge over the next two months, as US consumers try to prop up the global economy by going deeper into debt.<\/p>\n<p>So the consumer finance industry is proffering its services via store-branded credit cards to make this happen. It\u2019s not doing this for the love of the US economy but to extract its pound of flesh from consumers who don\u2019t make enough money to pay off their credit card balances every month \u2013 the very debt slaves that carry the $1 trillion on their backs \u2013 and who don\u2019t read the fine print. For them, the finance industry has a special money extraction tool: \u201cdeferred interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When consumers are at the cashier or online, they may get offers of 0%-financing and a discount on the first purchase if they sign up for a store-branded credit card on the spot. A study by <a href=\"https:\/\/wallethub.com\/edu\/deferred-interest-study\/25707\/\">WalletHub<\/a> of the financing options offered online by 75 large US retailers found that all retailers that offer store-branded cards <em>with 0% financing<\/em> use \u201cdeferred interest\u201d clauses:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Deferred-interest financing is like a wolf in a sheep\u2019s clothing, pairing an enticing offer \u2013 something like \u201cno interest if paid in full\u201d or \u201cspecial financing\u201d \u2013 with a clause that allows the deal to turn ugly if you make the slightest mistake. Paying your bill a day late or owing even $1 when the promotional period ends would enable the issuer to retroactively apply finance charges to your entire original purchase amount, as if the intro rate never existed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How US Debt Slaves Get Trapped by \u201cDeferred Interest\u201d But over the next 2 months, they\u2019ll try to prop up US retailers and the entire global economy. Credit cards play a huge role in what the US retail industry hopes will be a $682-billion splurge by Americans over the holiday selling season. Already, total revolving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[195,14713,16856,827,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-27597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-debt","tag-debt-slaves","tag-deferred-interest","tag-united-states","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27598,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27597\/revisions\/27598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}