The steady increase in outstanding consumer debt occurs because there is insufficient consumer income to purchase all that is on offer in the economy. Relatively lower interest rates merely facilitate the increase; it is not its fundamental cause as the article seems to suggest. When people do not have sufficient money to purchase the goods and services that are available and that answer to some need or want, they can nevertheless obtain the goods if they are able and willing to pledge their future incomes as collateral for additional credit in the present. It must be stressed that this credit, which is obtained from private banks in the form of lines of credit, personal loans, credit cards, mortgages, student loans, car loans, installment buying programmes, etc., is, like the bulk of the money supply, created out of nothing in the form of intangible numbers and issued as an interest-bearing debt. Consumers who borrow are not borrowing from the rich with the bank acting as an intermediary; they are borrowing the money into existence directly from the bank as a money-creating agency. Consumer credit therefore represents an injection of new or additional money for the economy, money the economy desperately needs if it is to stave off recession or worse.