Assuming you don't have any assets, you owe all of your mortgage, you have

[thereismore]

tons of credit card debt. Tell me a hundred ways this meltdown can screw you over, because I am sure it can.

PS. This is not an academic question...

[NMDemDist2]

1. whatever you do, don't miss a single payment

not a single day late anywhere

the banks will be very strict, they need every dime

[TroutMaskReplica]

2. Cant start a thread yet - Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are CRASHING!

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/morgan-stanley-slips-funding-concern/story.aspx?guid=%7B11667417%2D8F20%2D4868%2D8ACB%2DF504F04A03AB%7D

[Warpy]

6. Not exactly a surprise

since both of them were heavily exposed to the funny paper the hedge funds were churning out as securities.

Derivatives are going to slaughter us all when they finally evaporate into thin air. There isn't enough real wealth in the world to shore those stinkers up. They were all traded on the basis of what they might be, not what they actually were.

[truedelphi]

10. But where's your optimism, Warpy. Surely the minor matter of some

500 Trillion dollars in derivatives can't matter all that much!!

[Warpy]

11. My only optimism is from hoping

that the GOP money that bought Congress all these years is just as witless and greedy as I think it is and that they are all heavily invested in high risk, high return hedge funds, the first things to evaporate into thin air.

In other words, I'm going to hurt but I want them to hurt worse.

I won't believe in economic justice until I see a couple, him in a handmade suit and expensive Italian shoes and her in a designer dress carrying a $15,000 handbag fighting over a pizza crust with a cig butt squashed into it out of a dumpster.

I've spent much of my life living off other people's castoffs while watching opulence at the top grow to nauseating proportions. Excuse me if I want the opulent to share some of my life experience.

[truedelphi]

16. PM me when you see that couple fighting over the crust -

I want photos.

The worst instance of opulence that I endured was while sitting in my favorite Thai restaurant in Sausalito. The guy at the table across from me was explaining how he flew an orchestra to his mid-Pacific island, and then had his friends fly to the island for the symphony - and how they all had to be helicoptered to the top of the HILL on the island where the symphony took place.

And this is the sort of person that probably thinks it criminal that Obama would raise taxes on him!

[readmoreoften]

17. Please add some audio to those photos. I want to hear the whimpering.

I don't need video: photos will do. But I do want the whimpering. If you have to choose one or the other, forgo the photos, sketch them with color pencils, but do catch that whimpering.

[sandnsea]

3. They raise interest up up up

Until you can't afford any of your payments anymore and can never get out of debt. You can't file bankruptcy because your income is too high. You can't get a good job because they check your credit these days. You can't find a decent place to live because of your credit. Even your car insurance is higher because your credit is destroyed. Your life is ruined for ten years at least.

[Cary]

5. I'm not sure it's as bleak as this.

It could be, though, if McCain is elected and "conservatives" are allowed to have their way.

Anyway bankruptcy is still a good deal and credit is way over-rated. If your credit is bad the bankruptcy will probably even help you, so you're not screwed for at least 10 years.

[sandnsea]

7. They changed the bankruptcy laws

And yes this is what happens to people whose credit is ruined. It isn't "bleak". It happens every day, all over the country. If you made enough money to afford a mortgage and several credit cards, then you make to much for a bankruptcy. The idea that bankruptcy helps your credit is a big laugh and always has been. It doesn't work that way for regular people. And frankly, that was a best case scenario. Worst case scenario is homelessness, which happens too. Did you not live through the 80's?

[Cary]

13. I lived through the 80s and I've practiced bankruptcy law,

as well as representation before the IRS, and asset protection, and estate planning and administration.

I think I have a pretty good feel for what people have had to endure.

I stopped practicing bankruptcy altogether after the bankruptcy laws changed, but I still know enough to know that what you're saying here simply isn't true.

[lib2DaBone]

14. I'm curious.. How do the new Bankruptcy laws Work?

.. without getting into a major discussion of finance..( I know every person's situation is different) But it used to be that your credit card debt went away with chap 7 bankruptcy. Now, what will they do? Garnish furture wages... lien on house.. jail time if no payment is made on cards? Thanks...

[Cary]

15. Basically they just made more hoops you have to jump through.

My objection was a provision that would have required me to certify that the information in the petition was true. I am no auditor and I didn't want to put myself on the line that way.

Also they require credit counseling now, before you file a Chapter 7.

More people file 13s (a "readjustment" as opposed to a Ch 7 liquidation) now. Of course this creates more work for the courts and most people don't make it through a 13.

Essentially it's more expensive for people who are bankrupt. Isn't that great? (sarcasm)

[phantom power]

4. It could crash the economy, so you lose your job via ripple effects.

Or it could continue to devalue the dollar, so you get squeezed even tighter than you are now, and can't make your payments.

Those are the two things that leap to mind.

[snappyturtle]

8. I think the problem is SO massive.....people with money problems, i.e.,that

the ones in charge will be over-whelmed. After all, they can't get blood out of a turnip....especially a turnip that hasn't been cared for (the ones in charge). Those with little so far out number the ones with wealth that I see the economy for most turning to barter. If the few turn on the many, I see revolution.

[phantom power]

9. Blood out of a turnip...

that's precisely why the financial universe is imploding before our eyes. If most people could actually pay off all these mortages, then they would actually be worth what Wall Street claimed they were worth, and none of this would be happening.

But people can't pay them off, and they aren't worth what our Captains of Industry said they were, and here we are.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. Hopefully, the people you owe money to

will be the ones going under.