Deferred-payment credit cards let collapsing firms borrow money they cannot repay.

Evidence

Gordon kept in his desk drawer a large collection of credit cards bound with a rubber band. These cards were all charged to the hilt and useless. He had used them to get cash advances to pay operating expenses and salaries. Woburn had turned him into a prodigious consumer of credit, and he often received invitations to apply for new credit cards. … The banks would charge 22.9 percent interest, but Gordon didn’t mind that. He liked the cards because they required him to pay only 1 or 2 percent of the principal each month. He’d fill out the application forms and send them back by Federal Express. Within a month, each new credit card would be laden with several thousand dollars of debt. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 2116

Categorization

• CANDY: A desk drawer of maxed-out ‘shyster cards,’ paid back 1 percent a month, is a great dinner-party detail.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s earlier ledger of Woburn case costs and to the credit-market material in the Black-Scholes/financialization highlights.