The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged consumer debt

The Return of Debtors’ Prisons

By | 06.14.10 | 1:01 pm

No, really. Via Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that more and more people are being picked up and tossed in jail to satisfy their debts. Here’s one of many stories:

As a sheriff’s deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer’s purse into a

More…

Teaching Financial Literacy in a Credit Card Nation

By | 11.13.09 | 10:28 am

The subprime crisis certainly highlighted the need for American consumers to become more financially literate. But who defines financial literacy? And what makes someone an expert? Mike Konczal at Rortybomb asks these and other questions regarding financial literacy education — a subject TWI has also been looking into More…

Debt and the Changing Morality of Paying What You Owe

By | 07.27.09 | 9:46 am

People who refuse to make good on their credit card payments or other debts actually have a name — “ruthless defaulters” — and their numbers are likely to grow as more consumers find themselves overwhelmed by bills, according to David Streitfeld’s piece in The New York Times More…

The TARP Enforcer

By | 04.23.09 | 9:26 am

James Scurlock, director of “Maxed Out,” a groundbreaking documentary on consumer debt, steps up to defend TARP oversight panel head Elizabeth Warren today in The Big Money. Scurlock says that “no one grasps the true nature of our hard times” better than Warren, a longtime scholar of More…

TARP Cop Elizabeth Warren Already Under Fire From Right Wing

By | 04.21.09 | 9:13 am

Even before she poses her first question to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner when he testifies before her panel for the first time today, expect Troubled Asset Relief Program oversight head Elizabeth Warren to come under fire. That’s because conservatives have been gunning for Warren, who was an outspoken advocate for More…