Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit. James Scurlock D.
Читать онлайн книгу.
it’s suggestive selling experience.2
Jon and I are sitting in his mother-in-law’s immaculate kitchen, talking shop over a cup of coffee. “I know for a fact,” he tells me, “that they’re not interested in anyone with a banking background or knowledge of how it works. They want people with retail experience, like people who have worked in stores at the mall. People who can sell, sell, sell.”
“Sell debt?” I ask.
Jon raises his left index finger and ticks off an exhaustive list of financial products he had to sell: car loans, boat loans, vacation loans, refis, credit cards, overdraft protection, etc., etc. He pauses at credit insurance, a profit workhorse that, unbeknownst to most customers, mainly protects the bank by guaranteeing payment of one’s unsecured debts in the event of a job loss, illness, or death.3 (A friend’s grandmother was recently convinced to purchase credit insurance on a card she never uses, presumably because the word insurance automatically appeals to Depression babies.) Jon tells me how he was sometimes encouraged to increase the value of a refi by suggesting that the customer go on vacation or buy a new car. The cost of the vacation and/or the new vehicle would then be folded into the refi, making the loan amount much higher. “There’s a lot more pressure to hit these numbers,” he says. “And the standards have gotten so low, it’s credit without good judgment.”
So standards are down and pressure is up. If you fly Alaska Airlines, your cocktail napkin doubles as an advertisement for the Bank of America platinum Visa card and the flight attendants interrupt your nap to hand you an application in case you didn’t get the hint. If you open any of those innocent-looking e-mails from people whose names, with their tinge of familiarity, just might be a long-lost college pal, you will be assaulted by rate sheets and urged to call now for a free quote or to claim the credit you deserve with no obligation. If you go to the doctor, you will find that Capital One would love to finance your next surgery. Fees have changed the way banks make money. But most people still believe in the good old days, when banks only lent you money if they thought you could afford to pay it back. We still see approved as a major validation. Getting a loan from a bank, even in the form of a high-interest credit card, means crossing the threshold into adulthood.
Why do we continue to believe this fairy tale? Because we want to and the bank tells us to. Any credit offer that holds back on the love and adoration of a prospective client does so at its own risk. The envelope must look important, the copy must inform us of our preferred status, the vice president of marketing must personally congratulate us for being a valued customer and praise our responsible use of credit over the years, perhaps reveal that we are on a special list, that we are platinum or titanium or centurion or platinum select or preferred or whatever platitude we may not have heard—yet. The bank is not just giving us credit—oh, no. We have earned it and they are simply acknowledging our greatness. Our destiny. They are our humble servants. Their admiration is limitless and the credit will be ever flowing. Okay, so there will be a credit limit, but, then again, it can always be raised if we call them and beg, and it can be broken if we pay an overlimit fee.4
For those of us who receive our first credit offer in high school or college, it is as though we are leapfrogging the threshold into adulthood and realizing our ultimate destiny: to be a member of the American upper middle class. The late author Hubert Selby liked to say that Americans are taught that they are born assholes and the goal is to become an asshole with money. Yet, thanks to the new banking system, we are all assholes with credit by virtue of our eighteenth birthday.
I recently discovered, courtesy of a banking executive’s deposition that was made available to me, what actually happens when a completed credit card application, er, invitation (priority processing!) arrives at its destination: a data entry clerk sitting amidst dozens of similar cubicles pulls it from a stack of identical envelopes, types in the name, address, and Social Security number, and presses a button that sends this information to a credit bureau, which returns a credit score in a matter of seconds. This score determines whether or not the application is accepted and how much credit is to be granted, within a matter of nanoseconds. If denied, a rejection letter is automatically generated, the applicant is referred to a “subprime” lender, and then the application is shredded (we can hope, anyway). If accepted, the clerk flips the full application (the personal stuff about your job and how long you’ve lived at your present address, yada yada yada) onto a scanner. Most of this information, however, will never be used or even seen by anyone at the credit card company. It is only saved, as the executive explained, to “get a jump on collections.” Which reminds me of a beer cozy I got from a little gas station on the way back from Vegas: “If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.”
By the end of our conversation, I am amazed that Jon has any positive memories of the banking business, but he does. Jon tells me of an older customer, probably Yvonne’s age, who was living on Social Security. She had run up over $20,000 in credit card bills. How she got the credit cards in the first place is probably more troubling to us than to her: When you are of the age of hot flashes and senior moments and your home is about to be foreclosed, you don’t dwell on details. What matters is that Jon convinced her to cut up the cards, refinance her modest house, and create a budget which she could afford by being vigilant and never wasting a nickel for the rest of her days. By doing this, he saved her from eviction and who knows what fate after that.
Jon had been her guardian angel and the woman had cried tears of gratitude. It was the kind of good deed that he had imagined doing when he became a banker. The fact that her problems had not been caused by drought or recession or widowhood but by Jon’s own employer did not seem to bother him. What mattered was that he had cleaned up the mess and saved a life. Then, a few months later, the woman called the bank’s credit card division and said there’d been a mistake, that she wanted her credit cards back. Maybe she’d grown tired of eating canned vegetables or maybe she was itching for a trip to Caesars. The bank didn’t ask. They mailed her new cards out the next day.
Jon smiles and takes a sip of his coffee. Maybe it’s not such a great memory after all.
I wanted to visit Las Vegas for three reasons. One, the present banking system seems a lot like legalized gambling; two, Paul Krugman was becoming famous for his observation that “Americans are making money selling each other houses with money borrowed from the Chinese” and there was no hotter real estate market than Las Vegas, where homes had shot up nearly 50 percent in the past twelve months; and three, it is the home of Robin Leach, of Entertainment Tonight, Star Magazine, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, three pop culture phenomena that social critics and college professors love to blame for setting off the chain of events (Cribs, Us Weekly, Paris Hilton, etc.), which will eventually cause the meltdown—financial, moral, intellectual, and otherwise—of our civilization.
I meet Robin Leach in an upscale Italian restaurant at The Venetian, a glitzy megahotel/casino with its own canal system and singing gondoliers. Leach is heavier than he used to be and sports a salt-and-pepper goatee, but thankfully he has lost none of his ebullience. As anyone who’s watched Lifestyles knows, Leach is not a pessimist. He believes in the greatness of capitalism and the reality of second comings. Wayne Newton and Debbie Reynolds, both of whom declared bankruptcy, only to reappear onstage in rhinestones, were two of his favorite guests. And then there’s Donald Trump, one of the generation’s most prolific debtors. A terrific marketer, according to Leach, and not a man to underestimate, by the way. When I ask him if he thinks that Lifestyles’ slow pans of The Donald’s penthouse and helicopters caused people to become a little materialistic, he bristles. Leach believes the opposite: that his show promoted classic American values. As proof he offers up the story of an older black man he met by chance in a liquor store in L.A. The man thanked Leach for inspiring his two sons to change from Burger King–loitering homies to Brown University grads. When I look unconvinced, Leach cuts to the chase: “Nobody would watch Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown,” he crows. Case closed.
So it’s out to the suburbs for me, where the real action is. My producer has set up a meeting with Beth Naef, one of the city’s most successful Realtors. Beth sells dirt parcels and multimillion-dollar spec homes in what are commonly known as master-planned communities—those themed