Juggling Dynamite

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is much worse than layaway plans of yore. Layaway plans allowed people to make installments toward an item and pick it up on the last payment. BNPL allows people to take the item with the promise to pay for it in installments over time. Cash-strapped consumers have been using BNPL to pay for meals, groceries, and rent. Every cycle, finance creates another half-baked scheme to book phantom profits, securitize junk and sell it to investors. As with other types of credit, delinquencies are leaping, and Wall Street is working hard to hide bodies now piling up.

Paulina Cachero, Bloomberg Personal Finance Reporter, and Paige Smith, Bloomberg Consumer Finance Reporter, join to discuss this weeks Big Take on Americans Are Racking Up ‘Phantom Debt’ Wall Street Can’t Track. Here is a direct video link.

An extremely important and enlightening discussion. The energy future is bright!! Worth listening. Here’s a direct audio link.

Danielle was a guest with Jim Goddard on Talk Digital Network, discussing recent developments in the world economy and markets. You can listen to an audio clip of the segment here.

Also, see Copper rally driven by speculation, not fundamentals:

Spec­u­lat­ors are play­ing more of a role than phys­ical demand and sup­ply. In the US, the Com­mod­ity Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion tracks data on non-com­mer­cial trad­ing (long pos­i­tions versus short) of cer­tain com­mod­it­ies. For cop­per the net long pos­i­tion has surged since Feb­ru­ary, near the top of the 10-year range. Investors have been buy­ing cop­per for months rather than simply clos­ing out short pos­i­tions. This is where the mar­ginal cop­per buyer is com­ing from.