If You Can’t Afford It…

The Hartford Courant – along with a bunch of other MSM outlets – released an AP news story detailing how more and more people are falling behind on their credit card debt.

The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

At the same time, defaults — when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt — rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October from a year ago, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Serious delinquencies also are up sharply: Some of the nation’s biggest lenders — including Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC — reported increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago.

Of course…

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

Yeah right. Now that the people – who were not smart enough to realize what an ADJUSTABLE rate mortgage is – got the government to force banks to cut them a break, they figure now is the time to start complaining about the high interest and payments that they have on their credit card debt.

Borrowing words from James Tolkan’s character Stinger in Top Gun, “Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

And as Michelle Malkin has stated.

Suck. It. Up.

Right on. Maybe these folks should just stop spending money that they don’t have.  All indicators tell us there will be a federal bailout coming to cover the credit card payment crisis that is most certainly around the corner. Start spending now!