Ever felt guilty about taking out a loan to buy that car, fridge or presents at Christmas? Well don't -- with all the factories closing down and even the call centres being sourced overseas, consumer spending is one of the only things driving the UK economy.

Where does all this money come from? From debt. Based on the values of our homes, or homes that we may one day own, ghost money is being created at a rate of knots, and vanishing into the high street shops as fast as it can be created. In 2005 UK houshold debt nudged over the one trillion mark (that's a million million, by the way). UK household debt is now the highest in the world . The Bank of England is worried about the rise in unsecured borrowing , and this mountain of debt has already caused a record level of bankruptcies .

Corporations are trying to look like they are addressing the problem. In July 2005 credit card companies launched their website, 'choosing and using'. Set up by Apacs, the credit card companies' association, is was advertised by the BBC as offering 'help for people already experiencing credit card debt'. this fits right in with the UK government's policy of promoting 'education' to stave off the bursting of any debt bubble . Corporations like this kind of initiative, because it fits right in with their image of companies behaving responsibily -- no need for any of those nasty regulations. Meanwhile the boom in credit continues, with loans being offered in a variety of new places, such as supermarket credit/loyalty cards -- a Corporate Watcher recently spotted an advert for the Tesco card over a story warning of a debt problem created by 'ruthless banking practises' .

Although the debt bubble may be a headache for the government and the banks, it has created real misery for the thousands of families who face the 'credit recovery services' -- the heavies who usually buy up the debt when it is written off by the banks. Added to that are the policies of companies such as Brighthouse, who offer interest rates that reach 30% coupled with punitive fines, all because they target areas where people find it hard to get credit. The sociologist Zigmunt Bauman argues that in our modern society, people reach poverty when they are unable to consume at the socially acceptable level . With the average spend in the UK at Christmas 2004 being £813 per person, there are clearly many social pressures to get into debt . This problem is not just affecting the poor, however. Since 2004 the number of people with an income of £50,000 or more using the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) has doubled . All this indicates that, as house price rises slow, the high street spending boom is nearing a close. The strategy for the retail and banking corporations will surely be to transfer the cost of any economic slow down onto the very consumers who's debt has made these companies rich.

References
Financial Times, 'An uphill stretch for the economy,' Martin Wolf, July 14 2005 http://news.ft.com/cms/s/187753fa-f493-11d9-9dd1-00000e2511c8.html
Scotsman,'Britain's £1 trillion debt mountain', FRANK O’DONNELL, CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT, http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=871392004
Financial Times, 'Progress impeded: Britain's consumer-led boom looks for a new signal to proceed Bank counts the cost of a property slowdown', Scheherazade Daneshkhu and Chris Giles, July 7 2005, http://news.ft.com/cms/s/1d91934c-ee84-11d9-98e5-00000e2511c8.html
Guardian,'Household debt leads to record bankruptcies',Patrick Collinson, November 6, 2004, http://money.guardian.co.uk/interestrates/story/0,6453,1345033,00.html
BBC news website, 'Credit card advice site launched,' 22 July 200 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4705899.stm, Choosing and Using, www.choosingandusing.com/
For example the 2001 report by Consumer Affairs Directorate task force on tackling overindebtedness, www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/consultpdf/review.pdf
See www.creditcards.co.uk/news/2005/Mar/concerns-raised-over-household-debt.html
Bauman, Z. (2005) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor - 2nd Edition, (London: Open University Press)
Consumer Credit Counselling Service, press release December 2004, 'THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS CREDIT', www.cccs.co.uk/media/Article.aspx?ArtID=PR20041208
Consumer Credit Counselling Service, press release 2005, 'IT’S TOUGH OUT THERE... AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES ARE SHARING THE PAIN,' www.cccs.co.uk/media/Article.aspx?ArtID=PR20050518