If you saw the 2006 documentary
Maxed Out
, you have a sense of the extent of credit card debt in the oh-so-spendy U.S. But the problem exists worldwide, as Ronald J. Mann illustrates in a graphic feature in Foreign Policy. Since 2002, credit card spending has gone up considerably in all the world’s most advanced economies. Developing countries have gotten in on the buy-now-pay-later frenzy, too, with sometimes devastating results: “Too much, too fast can sink a national economy,” warns Mann, offering as examples the credit crazes in Mexico, Thailand, and South Korea.
—
Steve Thorngate
Image by
James Rintamaki
, licensed under
Creative Commons
.
