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Debt and Dying Bill Bonner The Daily Reckoning March 15, 2004 "Tony was such a kind man, he had a big heart. He shone like gold." -Lou We went, as usual, to the obituaries this morning... and found them crackling with good humor and good advice. Obsequies for gangster Tony Lambrianou must have been entertaining. The East End hoods and mobsters gathered - dressed in dark glasses, black leather coats, and heavy gold jewelry - and watched the hearse go by. "On the roof was perched a huge, ungainly floral boxing ring in vivid red, white and blue and a card-board cut-out of Elvis Presley," explained the press reports. But the affair was a bit of a disappointment to journalists. The scribblers were hoping for some glamour. In the past, gangsters were real celebrities... and brought out the stars. Judy Garland, Sonny Liston and Lord Boothby used to hobnob with the London underworld. Now, many of these stars of stage and crime are dead or washed up. Today, the world's attention focuses on terrorists; old-fashioned hoodlums go to their graves like an accountant to the Laundromat. Nobody cares. The local shops remained opened, says the article in the Daily Telegraph. In the old days, they would have closed out of respect for the fallen crime boss. And people would have lined the route of the funeral cortege and doffed their caps as the dead man went by. Yesterday, hardly anyone noticed. Tony was remembered as a 'gentleman' and a 'good man' in the bouquets. The papers recalled that in 1969, he and his brother Chris lent a hand to their pals, the Kray brothers. The frères Lambrianou carried off the body of Jack "The Hat" McVitie, after the Kray boys had gone to work on him with a carving knife. But what fine thanks you get when you help a friend; Tony and Chris were grabbed by the Bobbies and got 15 years in the hoosegow. What attracted our interest was how 'The Hat' came to be in such trouble in the first place. Apparently, 'The Hat' had lost his head... and failed to settle his accounts as gangland honor required. The Krays - unschooled in modern banking's loan workout procedures - had their own way of dealing with deadbeat debtors. Henchman Tony, dead suddenly at 61, will not come back this time. He'll have to settle his own accounts, and good luck to him. Meanwhile, in another part of town, the Lewis family continues to grieve over their man, Stephen. Like 'The Hat,' Stephen might be considered a victim of EZ credit. The average man in Britain has far less debt than the average American. He is said to have only two credit cards with about $1400 on each one. But Stephen Lewis managed to run up bills equal to 3 times his annual income. At the time of his death at 37, he owed 71,913 pounds - over $100,000 - on 19 credit cards. He is described as a "vibrant, popular man who was such a lovely personality." But for all his vibrations, he couldn't seem to get in tune with the modern credit industry. He took it all too seriously, in our opinion. Rather than stiff his foolish creditors like everyone else; the poor man killed himself last July. He must have thought he had to pay it back; someone should have explained. But now his pretty widow is in the papers, suggesting that the credit industry ought not make it possible for people to dig such deep holes for themselves. "The credit boom of recent years has brought great advantages to many individuals and families, and helped to raise standards of living," sympathized the Citizens Advice Bureau, "but it is also taking a huge toll on the those who have found themselves on the wrong side of the very narrow dividing line between successfully managing credit commitments and plunging into serious debt." "We have become a debt-laden people," added the Daily Telegraph in editorial comment. "Unsecured borrowing on credit cards and personal loans averages 4,400 pounds per person. The average new mortgage is about 100,000 pounds. In short, debt is darkening a great many lives." Well, so far debt is probably brightening more lives than it darkens. As long as interest rates are low and falling... and asset values do not fall... the lights should remain on for most people. It's when the juice stops flowing that the trouble begins. That's when you wish you hadn't borrowed so much... and feel faintly like blowing your brains out. But at the Lambrianou funeral, Tony's surviving sibling looked on the bright side. He warmed hearts with this remembrance of how the two brothers-in-crime felt as they were on their way to prison: "We were going away for a long, long time. We were in the darkness and we began to comprehend what was happening. You find something there in that darkness; there is a life there. There is always hope, a future." Fear not, dear reader, there is life... even after debt. Bill Bonner The Daily Reckoning Editor's Note: Bill Bonner is the founder and editor of The Daily Reckoning. He is also the author, with Addison Wiggin, of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal and international bestseller: "Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving The Soft Depression of The 21st Century" (John Wiley & Sons). ________________ 321gold Inc Miami USA