People were encouraged, culturally, socially, and even by their elected leaders to spend money they did not have, and suffered the consequences. Also, many of the politicians, including President Bush, who encouraged Americans to spend, spend, spend the economy out of recession and spend themselves into debt, received financial contributions from credit card companies. Economics is often described as a study of scarcity, how to allocate finite resources and to make choices. Every choice has an opportunity cost. But the use of credit often makes it seem as if people can have everything -- everyone is a 'preferred customer' who can fill in an application for a credit card, even a poor college student without a full-time job and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. Also, many people do not understand exactly how an interest rates can function and come back to haunt them in the long run. Homeowners who took out mortgages with adjustable interest rates might find themselves paying exorbitant amounts to banks when the Fed raises interest rates, and many borrowers did not really appreciate the full implications of interest rate spikes when they signed their mortgages. The prospect of owning one's own home seemed so important, important beyond reason. Many people seem to assume that if they are given...

They do not realize that lending institutions are in the business of making money, and want to take advantage of their gullibility.
Maxed Out" is a frightening film. It is frightening to see for any student with debt, anyone with credit cards, or anyone with a mortgage on his or her greatest asset, a home. People in the prime of their lives are driven to suicide, because they are facing the prospect of owing insurmountable sums that they know they can never pay. It is so easy to look around, and to assume that because people are in debt, and still keep spending money that it must be okay to spend in the same fashion. Debt has become normalized in America. The film suggests that Americans are becoming indentured servants or sharecroppers, with their lives and futures linked to lenders who want them to grow more and more dependent upon credit, and the need to consume more and more. Some of the film "Maxed Out" is quite funny in a bitter way, like the contrast between the 'good advice' given about lending and spending with how people and banks act in the real world, but the laughter it provokes in the viewer is an unsettling, uncomfortable kind of laughter.

Works Cited

Maxed Out." Directed by James Scurlock. 2005.