Vacationing Before Plastic

Here's a blast from the past, from an August 18, 1930 WSJ editorial:

“With unemployment and destitution in evidence” people are more inclined to provide for the future of themselves and their children; in boom times this is easily forgotten. This trend is seen in savings deposits - they gained $273.8M in the first half vs. a decline of $82.7M in second half of 1929; July has shown a further gain for the first time in six years (normally people withdraw money to pay for vacations, etc).

A quarter-century later, economists still cited such "normal" fluctuations in bank deposits at vacation time. Now, thanks to the abundance of plastic spending tools, the seasonal norm is for increases in borrowing rather than in withdrawals from savings.

The founder of The Merrill Anderson Company did not approve of this trend, as I learned early on. See Tales From the 20th Century: Borrowing Trouble.

Yesterday on TV, someone was worrying that new credit-card regs might create difficulties for "credit consumers." Wonder if Merrill would have understood that term?

Not sure what it means myself. When you finish "consuming" your credit, aren't you most likely bankrupt?