Juggling Dynamite

Danielle was a return guest on Thoughtful Money with Adam Taggart. You can watch a video clip of the segment here.

Here’s hoping…

Most environmental problems seem too big to face head on and actually solve. So conventional thinking, like degrowth, says we should retreat from these problems.

But new technologies – new tools – will change the game completely. Robotics and artificial intelligence mean that the marginal cost of labor is going to plummet toward zero.

As labor gets cheaper and more abundant, so does everything else. And this means that every environmental problem is going to become much more feasible to solve. Here is a direct video link.

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.