[Wayne Maybury]

How about all of the home equity loans that people have been taking out. Want a new big screen TV, vacation, or some other toy? Just take out a home equity loan. Sounds simple but assuming that you are actually going to be able to make the payments, you are going to be paying back the loan for 20 or 30 years on a short term or disposable item which is stupid especially if you are already deeply in debt.

The banks didn't care because they calculated that the prices of houses would keep going up and up so even if the home owner borrowed 100% of the value of the house today, it would still be worth more than that tomorrow. Now house prices are dropping and many people have mortgages well in excess of 100% of the market value of their home.

Credit is a good thing but unlimited or uncontrolled credit is turning out to be dangerous.

Wayne