Take this APR and Shove It

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




Take this APR and Shove It
He's been called a "credit terrorist," but Steven Katz says you shouldn't feel guilty about sticking it to Wall Street.

— By Kimberly Thorpe


At last count, Steven Katz owed $80,000 on his six credit cards, and he has no intention of paying any of it off. In fact, he'd like to show you how to be like him—a "credit terrorist" in open revolt against the banking system.

Katz is the founder of Debtorboards.com ("Sue Your Creditor and Win!"), a five-year-old online forum where he's collected countless tricks and tactics for evading and repelling persistent creditors. He's written how-tos on shielding your assets from seizure, luring collection agencies into expensive lawsuits, and frustrating private investigators looking for debtors on the run. He's even infiltrated the bill collectors' forums, where he's been tagged a "credit jihadist" and his site's been called a "credit terrorist training camp," a label he embraces. "Debtorboards is one of the biggest and most successful temper tantrums ever," the 59-year-old Katz boasts. The site has more than 10,000 members—double what it had in 2009.

Katz wants the millions of Americans buried in debt to stop feeling guilty about not honoring their obligations. "People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life," he says. "Business and morality have nothing to do with each other, according to the bankers." One of Katz's mottos is "No one ever went to hell for not paying a debt."

He wasn't always an unrepentant debtor. When he first spoke to me from his tax and accounting business in a strip mall in Tucson, Arizona, he recalled how his first job in the '70s was tromping through Brooklyn making collections for a small loan company. He once threatened to take a woman's kids to an orphanage if she didn't pay her bills. He wasn't serious, but it worked. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/steven-katz-credit-card-debt

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Most refreshing.

[Poboy]

2. recommend

[girl gone mad]

3. k & r

Our fight against the corrupt banking cartels isn't as visible as Egypt's, but it's here and growing, nonetheless.