Maxed Out
Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders
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Narrated by:
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James D. Scurlock
About this listen
Another profitable group can be found in and around our nation's universities, where credit-card issuers are forming "partnerships" with colleges: paying them millions of dollars for access to their students' personal information and essentially setting kids up for financial ruin.
Maxed Out examines an industry that thrives on making people fail, then pursues them relentlessly to death's door. The industry's frontier is called "debt buying" and it's a veritable Wild West in which young men are hoping to make vast fortunes off of the misery and misfortune of others. Their tool is a vast trove of personal information that can be bought for next to nothing - as well as intimidation, guilt, and fear.
By turns hilarious, fascinating, and deeply disturbing, Maxed Out is ultimately one observer's answer to the question, "Why can't we get out of debt?"
©2007 James D. Scurlock. All rights reserved (P)2007 Simon and Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Scurlock deserves credit (no pun intended) for opening more eyes to this dire issue." (Publishers Weekly)
"Can it be fun to read about people's lives being ruined by predatory lenders? Yes, oddly enough, if James Scurlock is doing the writing. He's as fiendishly clever as the banks and credit-card companies he goes after, which is saying a lot. After reading Maxed Out, you're going to want to shed your creditors and reacquaint yourself with the concept of cash." (Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch)
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Story
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
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What really happened to the American Dream?
- By Bill on 05-10-17
By: Brian Alexander
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Third World America
- How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream
- By: Arianna Huffington
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.
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Sad... but with a ray of hope
- By Maciej on 10-20-10
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The Up Side of Down
- Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
- By: Megan McArdle
- Narrated by: Mia Barron
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Most new products fail. So do most small businesses. And most of us, if we are honest, have experienced a major setback in our personal or professional lives. So what determines who will bounce back and follow up with a home run? If you want to succeed in business and in life, Megan McArdle argues in this hugely thought-provoking book, you have to learn how to harness the power of failure. McArdle has been one of our most popular business bloggers for more than a decade, covering the rise and fall of some the world' s top companies and challenging us to think differently about how we live, learn, and work.
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Good Book
- By Ray on 05-21-14
By: Megan McArdle
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Richistan
- A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
- By: Robert Frank
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The rich have always been different from you and me, but this revealing and funny journey through Richistan entertainingly shows that they are more different than ever. Richistanis have 400-foot-yachts, 30,000-square-foot homes, house staffs of more than 100, and their own "arborists". They're also different from Old Money, and have torn down blue-blood institutions to build their own shining empire.
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Ho Hum....being rich is work!
- By Scarlett on 06-16-07
By: Robert Frank
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Financial Peace Revisited
- New Chapters on Marriage, Singles, Kids and Families
- By: Dave Ramsey
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan, CJ Critt
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Dave Ramsey's New York Times best-selling guide to better living through financial security, now completely revised and updated.
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Surprisingly disappointing - sorry dave
- By Sally on 12-06-12
By: Dave Ramsey
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The Index Card
- Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
- By: Helaine Olen, Harold Pollack
- Narrated by: Helaine Olen, Harold Pollack
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
TV analysts and money managers would have you believe your finances are enormously complicated, and if you don't follow their guidance, you'll end up in the poorhouse. They're wrong. When University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack interviewed Helaine Olen, an award-winning financial journalist and the author of the best-selling Pound Foolish, he made an offhand suggestion: Everything you need to know about managing your money could fit on an index card.
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Getting your personal finance right? Start here.
- By Alan J on 04-27-18
By: Helaine Olen, and others
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Clark Howard's Living Large in Lean Times
- 250+ Ways to Buy Smarter, Spend Smarter, and Save Money
- By: Clark Howard, Mark Maltzer, Theo Thimou
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Clark Howard is a media powerhouse and penny-pincher extraordinaire who knows a thing or two about money. A lifelong entrepreneur who is now the hugely popular host of a talk radio program and television show and the bestselling author of several books, Clark consistently delivers expert financial advice to his wide and devoted fan base.
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Not too good
- By Chad on 09-28-11
By: Clark Howard, and others
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The International Bank of Bob
- Connecting Our World One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time
- By: Bob Harris
- Narrated by: Bob Harris
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to make lives like theirs better.
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Wonderfully entertaining and accessible book
- By Tim on 01-15-14
By: Bob Harris
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis
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Iceland's Secret
- The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Con
- By: Jared Bibler
- Narrated by: Jared Bibler
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later. Personally wiped out and seeking to uncover the truth about a collapse that brought the pastoral country to its knees, he became the lead investigator into some of the largest financial crimes in the world. This work helped Iceland to famously become the only country to jail its bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
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Excellent description of Icelands finacial crash
- By CJF on 08-19-24
By: Jared Bibler
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The Working Poor
- Invisible in America
- By: David K. Shipler
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 15 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Nobody who works hard should be poor in America, writes Pulitzer Prize-winner David Shipler. Clear-headed, rigorous, and compassionate, he journeys deeply into the lives of individual store clerks and factory workers, farm laborers and sweat-shop seamstresses, illegal immigrants in menial jobs and Americans saddled with immense student loans and paltry wages. They are known as the working poor.
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Textbook Perfect Discussion of the Problem
- By Cynthia on 07-28-12
By: David K. Shipler
What listeners say about Maxed Out
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Vikki
- 05-11-07
FANTASTIC
I recommend this book to everyone. Especially those who find themselves one paycheck away from being homeless.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall
- iLude
- 03-02-08
Terrible
Terrible, anti-corporate and bemoaning of reality. The author needs a lesson in basic economics.
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