Wallet Watch

Hot books on credit card debt and the middle class squeeze:

Credit Card Nation by Robert Manning. Published in 2000, this book was ahead of its time in categorizing the cost and sources of consumer credit by social class. Gives a great background on the history and evolution of credit cards and payment systems.

Up to Our Eyeballs by Jose Garcia, James Lardner, and Cindy Zeldin. This book is hot — just released in March 2008. It illustrates how credit cards are the new “safety net” for Americans, especially young adults, as the traditional forms of social insurance such as unemployment insurance, social security, and health care wither away. A great discussion of how Americans have amassed so much debt both because of shady lenders and failed economic strategies.

Maxed Out: Hard Times in the Age of Easy Credit  by James Scurlock. The companion book to Scurlock’s movie of the same name.  In a roadtrip-like diary, Scurlock chronicles  an America ravaged by debt, and a multitrillion-dollar addiction to easy credit in all of its absurdities and contradictions. Maxed Out exposes how Wall Street and Congress spawned the subprime mortgage crisis and reveals how credit card issuers form multimillion-dollar partnerships with universities — paying them millions for access to their students’ personal information, setting kids up for financial ruin before their first job.

The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. Chronicles how two-income families are almost always worse off than their single-income counterparts were a generation ago, even though they pull in 75 percent more in income. The problem is that so many fixed costs are rising — health care, child care, finding a good home — that two-income families today actually have less discretionary money left over than those single-earner families did.

Strapped: Why America’s 20- And 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead by Tamara Draut. This book offers a groundbreaking look at the new obstacle course facing young adults-the under 35 crowd-as they try to build careers, buy homes and start families. As Tamara Draut explains, getting ahead is getting harder. A college degree is the new high school diploma - but it now costs a fortune to get that degree and students graduate with crippling debts.

The Squandering of America by Robert Kuttner. Tells about how the steady dismantling of the managed form of capitalism that served both opportunity and security-and economic dynamism–in the decades after World War II has led to increased insecurity for American families.

Great Risk Shift by Jacob S. Hacker. Hacker defines the “Great Risk Shift” as “The currently favored response to rising insecurity: to throw more tax breaks and individual accounts at Americans to encourage them to save and invest on their own. This may help the privileged, but it won’t provide strong guarantees of economic security to ordinary Americans, who are just barely staying afloat. Nor will it stop the huge shift of risk onto these hardworking families as jobs, health care, and retirement all become less secure. ” Hacker says this isn’t a natural occurrence — our our leaders could have responded to those forces by building up the floodgates that protect us from the rising tide of economic risk. Instead, in the name of personal responsibility, many of them are busy tearing the floodwalls down.