EDITORIAL: Encouraging debt could lead to a new crash

I WALKED into my bank in Victoria Avenue recently and was greeted by a marketing display of assorted credit cards.

Call me naive, but what surprised me was that none of these credit cards was for the bank I was standing in. They were the products of rivals.

As I read the pitch, I realised they were asking me if I had any of these cards and that I should swap them for one of theirs. In short, they were asking to take over my credit card debt.

Now I can understand a bank wanting my savings - that money is on the plus side of the financial ledger - but why be responsible for money I owe?

Of course, as many have slowly come to realise, there is money to be made on debt. In fact, banks and other financial institutions positively love it, and regularly encourage us to "consolidate" our debts with them.

To paraphrase Wall Street's Gordon Gekko: "Debt is good."

Chuck in all the high street stores offering interest-free, no-deposit, delayed payments for assorted goods - you can take home that flat screen TV and the debt that goes with it without handing over a dime.

So the message from the business world is: "Live beyond your means; owe money - the more, the better."

Call me naive ( ... oh, you already did!), but I was brought up to think of debt as not a good thing; owing money was to be avoided if possible.

And I vaguely recall a global financial crisis that brought the civilised world to its knees - and cost a lot of people their savings and/or their jobs - that was founded on excessive debt (worthless property in the United States, otherwise known as sub-prime mortgages).

Now I know a lot of people in the financial sector made millions out of this global crisis, but, for the ordinary man in the street, it was pretty tough.

So my question is: How long do we have keep encouraging people into debt before we have another crash?