LETTER: Easy’ credit not as easy as it appears

I truly believe that if people really were tired of the price of gasoline that with full cooperation, we could cut it in half in 60 days.

The cure would be to buy no gas with anything but green dollar bills. No credit cards, no charge accounts, just old green money. This would cut consumption in half and would cause lots of people to not be paying for this year’s gas with minimum credit card payments down the road for years from now.

Any credit card use would be paid at the end of 30 days. If you couldn’t pay full accounts in 30 days, it is because you are living beyond your means and income. Sounds tough, but then check back on how your grandparents lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Easy credit is the monster that has put this nation in debt up beyond their eyeballs. We came out of World War II with a large debt, but it was managed by price controls and laws that demand 25 percent down for most purchases besides homes and cars.

If my memory serves me correctly, it took around 10 percent down on a home and 15 percent on a car. Those of us who had served in the military were given 4 percent interest on a home, but we had to have enough down to satisfy the lender, and they had rigid restrictions to protect their stockholders.

The word “easy” is the most deceitful word in the English dictionary. Easy credit has allowed greedy real estate developers to take prize farmland and build homes for people in some cases unable to manage their affairs and finances well enough to even begin to qualify them to move into a new home with nothing down and then max out all the available credit cards to furnish their home. If this is good business practice, then the times since 1965 up has certainly taken a turn for the worse.

This easy credit has caused the inner cities to go into ruin in many neighborhoods. The houses that were once bought by newlyweds in their start-up years are no longer good enough. Newlyweds want to start out on an equal basis with their parents who have put a lifetime in acquiring what they have.

That has caused more pain to more people, whether it is easy credit or ethanol production. Both have made many unhappy and destitute people in this and other lands.

— Ted Roth,

Newton