Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit. James Scurlock D.
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and rice,” to get out of school and start making money. He tells them to hold garage sales. Lots of them. Then, during the commercial breaks, he urges his listeners to visit a mattress store where they can get “the really good $5,000 mattress sets for only $3,000” and why not stop by the pawnshop that has been a sponsor of his show from the beginning? That’s where rich folks shop, he tells them. The plugs are not so much advertisements as they are testimonials, though it seems more than a little absurd that someone drowning in debt would plunk down three grand for a trophy mattress or spring for a bargain Rolex.
In many parts of the country, “Dave told me to sell it” is a perfectly good explanation to the buyer of a used Jet Ski, an SUV, or any other toy. Dave knows his audience and he makes allowances for their weakness. The centerpiece of Financial Peace University is what he calls the “debt snowball,” which means paying small bills first, regardless of the interest rate. Of course, this is not such a good idea from a strictly mathematical standpoint (most experts advise paying off the highest-interest debts first). But Dave has succeeded by being a realist, not an academic. He knows that his listeners have short attention spans and Americans aren’t so good at math in general. Dave defends the debt snowball by pointing out that it makes people feel as if they are achieving something quickly so they stick with the program longer. In other words, the debt snowball is no different from the crash diets which have become so ingrained in American life. What counts is fast results.
And, like Stop the Insanity! Susan Powter, the queen of diet infomercials, Dave can relate. He can tell his flock how, in the mideighties, he built a multimillion-dollar real estate fortune, only to lose it all by being stupid. He had to sell the Jaguar the day before it was going to be repo’d. He lost his house. He almost lost his marriage. He declared bankruptcy. The empire was built on a fantasy—on debt. Debt is evil. Debt is so evil, in fact, that Dave advocates paying cash for everything, with the exception of a mortgage, which should be no longer than fifteen years. When I ask Dave to define predatory lending, he responds, “All debt, to a degree, is predatory.”
The day after I meet Dave, I decide to visit his bankruptcy attorney, Edgar Rothchild. Edgar is perhaps the most successful bankruptcy attorney in the state—if you define success by sheer volume. Edgar mostly processes Chapter 13s, where debts are not discharged but repackaged into a court-supervised plan. Debtors then make a monthly payment to a bankruptcy trustee, who pays off the creditors. But the vast majority of Chapter 13s that Edgar processes are eventually converted into Chapter 7s, where the debts are discharged, for the simple reason that most debtors can’t keep up the payments.
Edgar won’t talk about Dave on the record, but the mention of his most famous client brings an immediate smile that says, I operate in the real world. When you ask Edgar why so many Americans are declaring bankruptcy—the rate is now ten times that during the Great Depression—he can cite a number of reasons, but they all revolve around a simple truth: Americans’ incomes have not kept pace with expenses. And, as far as Tennessee is concerned, the educational system is failing its students. A lot of Edgar’s clients are illiterate. They can’t get good jobs and they are easy prey for con artists. His wealthier clients have other problems: divorce, medical bills, job losses, children. “Do you have any idea what it takes to feed a teenage boy?” he smiles.
That afternoon, I return to Financial Peace University to ask Dave a few questions. I wonder if his “tough love” approach might be for show—if, off-air, Dave might have more sympathy for his listeners than he demonstrates on-air. If he might have some insights into why debt has become a cultural phenomenon. After all, the notion that millions of Americans woke up one day and willingly ensnared themselves in a trap they could never escape seems a little far-fetched. It also seems to me that the government bears some of the responsibility. After all, didn’t President Bush tell Americans, in the wake of September 11, to go to Disney World, to enjoy America as we want to enjoy it? Didn’t Tom Daschle, then the Democratic leader of the United States Senate, tell us to “go out and buy that suit you’ve been thinking about”? Hasn’t the United States Congress put every American family $80,000 in debt in a single generation, using our full faith and credit to pay for thousand-dollar toilet seats and countless “fact-finding” missions to exotic island nations and ski resorts?
But Dave will have none of these excuses. His listeners change their lives, he tells me, when “they look in the mirror and say, ‘You! You’re the problem! It’s the guy I shave with every day.’ If I can change his behavior, I can be rich and thin.” (Like a number of people I will meet, Dave thinks that obesity and indebtedness are flip sides of the same moral failing.)
“Is it any surprise,” he continues, “that people who go into debt elect people who go into debt? I don’t think it’s the other way around.” Finally he adds with a little smirk, “My savior doesn’t live in Washington, DC. That’s not where he lives.”
I leave Financial Peace University contemplating God and debt. And feeling a little like the cowboy with the guitar: that maybe I’ve missed the boat. After all, I’ve spent two days in Tennessee and seen dozens of bumper stickers advertising how Jesus saves. I am smack in the middle of the Bible Belt. If the good people of Tennessee were having so many problems with money, surely the first question on their tongues would be “What would Jesus do?”
(Note to cowboy with guitar: Christian music sales are growing much faster than country and western.)
As it turns out, a lot of ministries have started to answer that very question. Earlier that week Jerry Falwell had delivered a sermon from his compound in Lynchburg called “People Who Steal from God.” The message? People get into financial trouble because they don’t give the church enough money. I’ve heard about a preacher in North Carolina holding debt revivals, where families cleanse themselves by destroying their credit cards at the altar. There was a pastor at the West Angeles Church in Los Angeles who’s developed a ministry called Millionaires in Training. No matter that some of the highest bankruptcy rates are to be found along the Bible Belt. God wants Christians to be debt free.
After trolling the Internet for less than an hour, I find myself with an invitation from an evangelist named Steve Diggs to attend his No Debt, No Sweat! ministry that evening in Antioch, an undergentrified suburb fifteen miles southeast of Nashville whose finest establishment is the obligatory (and cash-only) Waffle House.2 Steve is a former advertising man who used to be fat and in debt. With the Lord’s help, he and his wife conquered those demons. Now he is trim, debt free, and out of the advertising business—sort of. Steve sells a plan to help Christians get their financial house in order for $36. The No Debt, No Sweat! mission(ary) statement is “to teach you to handle money so you can take off like a bullet with a tailwind.” On the phone Steve is a nice guy, full of energy, and he promises a great show, complete with feathered boas, loud Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, and a female impersonation. I can hardly wait.
The seminar turns out to be quite tame, but then again, I am from L.A., a fact that Steve receives with a look of some consternation or apprehension or both. Later on he will tell his “L.A. story”: Steve and his wife win tickets to the Emmys from a local radio contest and go to Hollywood, but the moment they arrive at the red carpet, they find that their people are protesting the industry’s immoral agenda from the other side of the velvet rope. Steve has a crisis of conscience, realizes he’s on the wrong side of the rope, yet he and his wife decide to go to the Emmys anyway. They even go to the after-party to mingle with the hedonists. Steve has had an epiphany not uncommon among the evangelical crowd: It’s better to be an insider if you want to effect change. Plus, there’s the gift bag …
The Antioch audience listens politely (they are in church, after all) as Steve paces the center aisle talking very fast into a Garth Brooks–style headset. When a gray hair complains that Steve needs to slow it down, Steve shocks me by telling the old guy tough luck. This turns out to be by far the most dramatic moment of the evening.
Steve tries to be funny, but the crowd doesn’t laugh much. Maybe he is talking too fast. And maybe they are more confused by the camp antics (feathered boa and otherwise bad drag) than amused by them. He gratuitously mentions his dislike of the “homosexual agenda” to reassure them of his conservative Christian credentials. But no matter.