Nightline on “Maxed Out”

The new documentary, Maxed Out, got some well-deserved hype on Nightline tonight. It was a great movie, gripping, and well worth the view. One particularly shocking effect of debt collection that Maxed Out brought out is how often debtors in over their heads consider suicide. Suicide because of debt.

It’s always amusing to watch apologists from organizations like the American Bankers’ Association try to explain away the harm that debt can cause. As the Nightline bit admits, debtors aren’t free from blame, but credit card companies aren’t stopping at merely extending debt. They are trying to eliminate bankruptcy, the only way out for debtors who screw up. They are jacking up late and overlimit fees–the real profit center–to multiply the debt actually incurred. And they never have to answer the hard questions, thanks in part to politicians sympathetic to the “money industry” and its dedicated “protectors.” (Protection in this case meaning not doing anything at all.)

And, of course, I was glad Nightline highlighted the portions of the movie with People First Recoveries, whose enthusiastic owners come across as a bit too bloodthirsty for debt collection. Every consumer attorney who uses the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act against People First Recoveries should get a copy of Maxed Out.