I have a feeling this is going to be a regular feature here...
It's for a credit card, of course. A woman pushing a baby in a stroller, and apparently stopping at every shop on the street and buying something at every one. By the end of the street, the stroller is piled up to the second story balcony. The tagline: "For all those everyday purchases..." Boy, that's a great message to send. While Americans' savings are at an all time low, and our overall debt (both individual, corporate, and national) is at an all-time high, when the banking & credit card industries just pushed a bankruptcy bill that basically doesn't let you lose your debts to them, they're telling people, "spend more! Just charge it!"
I swear we are at the precipice of another major depression. All the indicators are there - first, the regulations that were put in place *because of the first Great Depression,* the ones that didn't let banks and insurance companies intermingle and speculate on stocks, were lifted under the Reagan administration. Secondly, Americans, both individuals and corporations, are carrying a higher percentage of debt than ever before in history.
Third, thanks to NAFTA & CAFTA (aka SHAFTA), it's incredibly easy for money to just flow right out of the country. But not so easy for people.
Fourth, let's not forget that under W., we've lost almost as many jobs as under Hoover. And that was a lot. And just about every New Deal safety net put in place to protect the American people from just these situations has been effectively gutted. The only exception is Social Security, and we see how hard the GOP is trying to get their hands on that one too.
If you look at every indicator for what caused the Great Depression, we've got it going on right now. In fact, highly respected economists are saying that the only thing keeping our economy going, at this point, is the debt being carried on by consumers. So, in essence, we're all living beyond our means, and when the bill finally comes in, *someone* (anyone speak Chinese?) is going to repossess *everything.*