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As of October 2015,
American consumers owe $8.17 trillion in mortgages, $900 billion in credit cards, and $1.19 trillion in student loans. Home mortgages, credit cards, and student loans occupy the most of the consumer credit market.
The consumer credit market is the dream paradise of money merchants, known as moneylenders. Just as pharma companies sell drugs to make money by way of profit, money merchants sell money to make money by way of interest.
Note again, money merchants sell money to make money. They sell money to millions of American consumers needing to buy houses, cars, or home appliances. They sell money to millions of American students becoming physicians, lawyers, managers, as well as to college students. Big operators set up banks, brokerage houses, and credit unions. Small operators run payday loans and pawnshops. The rich and the wretched, the lord and the tenant, teachers and students, men and women, all this and all that, except the privileged few, are obligated, in one form or the other, to money merchants.
Carrying debt has become a quintessential attribute of American life. And creditworthiness, the ability to borrow money, is the most valued personal asset an individual may garner. Credit monitoring companies gather information about an individual's "bill payment history, loans, current debt, and other financial information." Credit reports also inform money merchants where the individual works and lives and whether the individual has been "sued, arrested, or filed for bankruptcy." Losing creditworthiness can have more severe consequences for an individual than losing liberty, even body limbs.
Interest rates ranging from 3% to 30% lie at the core of the credit market.
After nullifying laws against usury, federal and state legislatures have rewarded money merchants with handsome legal names, such as creditors, mortgagees, card issuers, and secured parties. In turn, money merchants use various "credit products" to compose the ensemble of interest rates. They sell money for fixed periods with structured payments, such as a 30-years mortgage. They sell money as endlessly spinning Ixion wheels, known as credit cards. These credit spinning wheels could carry an interest rate over 30% for individuals with questionable credit.
Occupying all nooks and crannies of American life, the money merchants have unbolted an ever-expanding credit juggernaut, much larger than equity markets. The Federal Reserve Board controls the interest-rate push button to modify the behavior of Pavlovian money merchants.
Comment: See also: By targeting RT the Western 'elite' expose their deep loathing of real journalism
And out of the horse's maw: