Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 10am
By John Friedman

Lots and lots of people have a real devil in their financial lives. This devil comes in numeric form, and is always in the double digits. Sometimes, even, the double-digit-devil begins with a 2 or a 3.

 

And, for a lot of these bedeviled people, if somehow that double-digit-devil number miraculously changed to a single digist number, then, quite literally, everything in their financial world would be OK – they would have decent financial health. But, as is, what with this double digit deviling number havig a full complement of two digits, often with the first digit being a 2 or a 3, they have such dreadfully woeful financial health that bankruptcy is in their future.

 

It’s that black and whjite. If this number was 9 or less, they’d be OK. With it at 20 or more, they’re often well-advised to seek bankruptcy counsel.

 

* *

 

Have you guessed what the bedeviler number is? For some, it’s obvious, because they’ve previously walked down the forsaken path inhabited by the devil, or because they are currently on it.

 

For others this whole topic is a big mystery because it is just not anything that has ever even come close to entering into their lives. They are very fortunate, if perhaps a rose-colored-glass wearer).

 

* *

 

 

Two last hints: the devil number is, in some contexts, totally illegal. If you or I were to use this number in our life, it would be illegal. But for the financial services industrial complex? For them it is 100% legal.

 

Also, the devil number is the subject of passages in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Qur’an, papal decrees, and, perhaps most famously, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

 

Got it?

 

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Until The Great Deregulation of the late 1970s and 1980s, the interest rate which credit card companies could charge was a matter of state regulation.

 

 

 

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is illegal if propounded by normal people. is a percen

 

Rathwer than play a game of 20 questions, though, let’s I will tell This partriculoar devil is also

 

 

 

 

 

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