The PBS streaming video is up

Chris,

Thank you... and thank you WGBY for sharing.

This is excellent, you are excellent... Not many who can take a complicated subject and make it understandable to all.

I know this will help me convince some of the people who have been unwilling to watch the CC, to finally watch.

Thank you for all your efforts in helping all!

Cat

Dr. Martenson,

Thank you so much for your efforts. The "tipping point" of awareness is now a real possibility, because of you and your efforts. You work has changed my life and my family lives for the better. We will always be grateful.

 

Thank you Chris and WGBY!!

This presentation is concise and understandable. I believe it is a perfect vehicle for getting people to spend the three hours or so on the crash course. My previous efforts to get my friends and family to take the crash course only met with limited success. I just blasted out an email to everyone with a link to this PBS presentation. I am pretty sure it will spur a few others in my circle to spend some time on the crash course. I'd say this is the beginning of a hockey stick.

Chris, While viewing your PBS program (I refer to it as the "preamble" to the CC)... You say more than once in the Total Credit Market to Debt as a % of GDP material... That debt stays fixed, that it is an important concept.  You say this when talking about The Depression. I understand the relationship of the economy/income to debt, but don't understand why you say the debt stays fixed when ours is growing.... Later when you are talking about our current debt you say it is rising, so I am unclear why you state at one point that it is fixed.   Thank you, Cat  P.S.  Dogs and I have a friend who works at the local PBS station in Norfolk... I have put a bug in his ear about getting your program here... He has requested a DVD from WGBY.

Thanks Chris and PBS, very good and timely...an easy sell to get people to watch the whole CC.

 

Years ago I used to work for a large Canadian chartered bank.

One thing I noticed as I was new to credit back in 1999:

Standards were getting lax by the older rules. 

I was taught by the old school lenders, net worth, job security, current debt ALL mattered. 

We then had the Head Office type folks come in and were pushing the new system.  If the software said approve...you approve---no questions asked.  Negative net worth did not matter, income verification did not occur, even if you had a ton of debt, as long as you fit in the ratio (keep in mind income was not being confirmed) AND existing credit was good, you were good to go. 

These were unsecured loans, credit lines, credit cards and overdrafts for 10 k or under---if you knew how the system worked you could sometimes get one of each.

I felt back then it was wrong to grant a loan that you knew in your gut was no good.  The explanation I was given was that to question the loan is a waste of time from approving more loans.  It was simply a cost of doing business, and not to worry this was a model that would prove to make more profit (for who though?) in the long run.  This was a conscience effort to compete against the European and American banks (who were probably being told they had to do the same thing to compete against the Canadian and Australian banks).

 

I don't know how it works now or the past 10 years, but there was a change in the lending standards of banks in Canada 10 years ago.  It was way easier to get unsecured credit.

 

 

GREAT VIDEO, although, being a CC website troll i wanted something a bit more, hyper-inflation vs. deflation perhaps, but I completely understand the 'getting the word out' approach as i am doing it myself.

cat233, to answer your question,

 when chris talks about the debts remaining fixed is that in the first example he is explaining a single debt (microeconomic) and in the second example he is speaking of the enitre market (macroeconomic).

if you didn't grab that then i will 'go all high school teacher' here.

for example, a car loan on a 2008 honda is fixed at $20,000 but it will not rise or fall for any reason unless him/her pays the loan off, the owner of the car owes that money regardless of their future income or situation. if the owner of the car loses his/her job the loan is fixed while the income falls away and the debt/income ratio will increase. that is what chris is explaining by the chart.

in the macroeconomic example chris is adding up the amount of all the $20,000 car loans in the economy that we continue to keep taking out and comparing them to the overall econmoy's increase in the income levels. obviously, the loans were being made at a far faster pace than our incomes could keep up with.

did i trip over myself trying to explain that?

 

steve

Cat - I meant that debt is fixed in the sense that it does not rise and fall with our fortunes.  It exists (and grows) unless and until it is paid down.

Income, and assets, on the other hand are variable and go up and down.

I should have said debt is "relatively fixed" or something like that.  The point I was making about the rise in debt-to-GDP in the 1930's was that the debts remained fixed in place (relatively speaking) while it was the economy (GDP) that fell away from under the (relatively) fixed debts.  

In my defense, I was given one shot at doing the whole thing right and I am not an actor who memorizes lines.  And I had never given that talk before, with those slides in that sequence making all of those points.  Plus the crew was constantly stopping things for various technical reasons and then saying "pick up right where you left off!"  For all of these reasons I am marginally pleased that I was somewhat understandable at all.

And thank you for spreading the word(!!)

Chris,

Thank you for the explanation.

I think I heard you say ONE, "uhh-umm"... It caught my attention because your presentation was next to flawless.... You are a fantastic teacher and speaker...  You need NO defense.

Cat

Chris,

I watched the PBS video late last night and thought you did a great job!

It is a wonderful intro to the CC and a place that we can point others. It gives one a sense credibility, a place far away from this site. I'm gonna send one of my DVDs to WHYY (our local PBS) and refer them to WGBYs program.

I can feel things beginning to tilt...

P.S. I think I recognized a few cameo's in the audience!

You are a good speaker and careful educator. I am only on Chapter 14 of the CC. I enjoyed the PBS video and got a lot from it. So far what I have learned: the next 20 years cannot be the same as the last 20 years. That is so obvious and clear. Thank you for teaching me that. Also, I am understanding how the Treasury is different from the Federal Reserve, another good thing to learn.

I did the Money or Your Life course (books & tapes) several years ago and really embraced that. Your information builds on it and is so helpful to me.