What's going to happen is that the unusual hardship - loss of jobs, specifically - is going to become very usual and that's where widespread pre-existing over-leveraging is going to hurt. And that's where the newspeakly named "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" is going to hurt double-plus good with its special favors to the CC sharks.

You are going to see a big change in bankruptcy typology. Not just the big accidents anymore - hospital bills and no coverage - but the average Joe who got sucked up in the wealth on credit con. The focus is going to shift from the "hapless victim" to the neighbor or the friend "being denied the American Dream". It's new and it's going to have important political and social implications.

I don't think pointing that out is playing in the rightwing rhetorical frame. I my mind, it's very clear. It takes two to play the idiot debt game : the debtor and the lender, and if the debtor can't pay, fuck the lender. It shouldn't have loaned the money in the first place.

Oh I have no doubt we will be hearing about these middle-class big spender exceptions to the general rule about financial hardship in America.

No and that's the point. These "middle-class big spenders" won't be some other guy, unknown, everyone can scorn safely from a distance, or some victim of life you can pity but no, it's never going to happen to me. The "middle-class big spender" will be the rule and it's going to be you, whoever is sitting in front of the TV being served that discourse*, your sister, your father, your colleague at the office, your friend. It won't fly. People don't like to get the finger wagged at them.

(* Assuming that discourse is served for very long. I'm dubious. I don't think the lenders will be so stupid as to continue to openly confront and piss-off 2/3 of the country. They'll rather concentrate on restructuring and "helping" and do all they can to bleed a little more fluid from the stone for a few more years. Being aloof is not doing any good to the mortgage industry right now. I think the rest will learn.)