vol. 5 issue 15
Greetings,
If you currently find yourself in debt for whatever reason, you know it is hard to get out of it.
About a decade ago, after having been one of millions of victims of Wells Fargo, a corporate “citizen” (thanks SCOTUS) who historically trades in sneaky debt fuckery, I came to learn more about the debt industry than I cared to.
And an industry is exactly what it is, one over which we have virtually no control.
If you are struggling to get out from underneath the Sisyphean crush of debt and poor credit ratings, later this week, I plan to offer you immediate and practical solutions by way of a podcast with one of the few debt consolidators/reduction specialists who remain in business after the debt massacre of 2008.
The most recent go round I found myself facing with lenders was the tens of thousands of dollars in unsecured debt I was left with after my recent divorce. I fully intended on paying off the debt, but once my APR hit nearly 30%, I called bullshit on the loan sharking and sought help.
I saw no reason to declare bankruptcy, but given my experience with WFF (you know what the extra F is for) I also knew better than to deal directly with the bank-backed lenders to help reduce these outsized interest rates.
That would be akin to an abused wife begging the very husband who pushed her down the stairs to now set her broken arm.
The screamy paranoid ads for debt consolidation companies that blast you from any Rupert Murdoch-related media, as well as every single English-speaking AM radio station I have ever been assaulted by also gave me no confidence.
So, I did some research. Eventually, I found Marie Megge, a Michigan-based, independent debt counselor who got into the business after her family was facing some extreme medical bills. Marie herself learned just how pernicious this industry is, but she pushed back and became an expert at beating creditors at their own game, or at least working with them to be less inhuman.
Marie and I will give a general review of the rise of the debt industry and how it inserts itself unbidden into our lives. We’ll discuss how and why banks assign our credit ratings using secret metrics that allow them to justify whatever interest they want to assign. We’ll discuss how interest rates often are irrelevant to the lenders’ calculus, and how they remain profitable regardless of whether we ever pay off our credit cards.
We will discuss what makes Marie’s company different from the corporate-owned ones (hint: she’s not a bank and she’s not funded by banks). We will cover why the banks are actually willing to settle, even though they are always changing the rules and the typical time frame before a settlement is reached. We’ll also discuss which kinds of debt usually settles first, such as unsecured vs. medical debt, and why student loans are unforgivable unless you die.
I especially want to address the psychological impact of being in debt. When Wells Fargo was actively ruining my life by pretending it hadn’t invented some home equity lien on the deed to my home – one of the many millions of made up transactions Wells Fargo profited from until the feds finally busted them after years of their lies – I was so outraged, I wouldn’t give up. It took me four years, but I finally cleared the lien.
But that’s because the best way to make me your enemy is to accuse me of something I didn’t do. And also because I am blessed with many resources, including a tenacious ability to research my way out of virtually any situation. But how many people had heart attacks and died from the stress of these fuckers? How many suicides? How many divorces or other family ruination?
How many people are so ashamed of their debt, forced into it by circumstances over which they had no control, they don’t tell others they are in trouble? Or, they just keep paying only the principal because they don’t know that they have been sucked into a system that is not on their side?
What is the untold moral injury of the debt industry as a whole?
The politics behind this are as to be expected: because it’s an industry, one with serious lobbying power, it’s not in the banks’ interests to make getting out of debt easy. Nor do they want it so that not going into debt in the first place is much of an option. They need you to be in debt. Just like any abuser needs a victim.
And now, thanks to some pretty nifty court stacking by the last administration, the federal agency tasked with protecting citizens from predatory lending has been declared unconstitutional because of – wait for it – how the agency is financed.
The Supreme Court, filled with the same dark lord puppets justices who declared Wells Fargo a person, is now set to hear whether the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is sane is itself constitutional. A verdict is expected next summer.
(Not for nothing, the CFPB has repeatedly called out as the most egregious “corporate recidivist” none other than Wells Fargo. One wonders if there is some retaliation to discover here, but I digress…)
In truth, I really don’t want to treat this as a reporter should, which I ordinarily would do when covering such a technical and political topic. For me it’s personal and I can do more good by telling you first hand how I have been handling my situation, and how you can too, than I can by coming in from 30,000 feet with all the factual ways in which dark lords have woven a web of evil treachery in secret, something I have no difficulty believing is happening, but which I do not want to go poking through.
So, that’s what’s coming later this week, god willing and the creek don’t rise.
Peace,
Whitney
Thank you for fighting the good fight and sharing it with us. I look forward to hearing the details. The system is now so arcane that even after paying off a car-loan debt in full, chasing down the leaseholder for the release papers is nearly impossible since that loan has been sold to other companies and it is very difficult to find out to whom! Such a terrible waste of time for the "little people".