I'm from Singapore, and already one bank (United Overseas Bank, I believe) trotted out a new VISA card exclusively for women. Glossy black background with a large rose in the foreground. The advertising campaign used the tagline "The men just don't get it".

Like the author says, it offers a range of discounts and promotions for the usual suspects - spas, chic fashion houses, cosmetics etc.

My wife really wanted to get one, but the idea died a natural death because she is generally paperwork-averse. Personally, I'm glad because she's already collecting credit cards like they're Pokemon! Gotta have'em all! She doesn't overspend, thank goodness, but it pisses me off to no end that we are spending needless hundreds on yearly subscription fees for cards she never uses. The best part? Even on those cards she doesn't use, we somehow end up owing them hundreds. Whenever I call up the card companies to demand an explanation, we always get the same story - While the card was never used, the subscription fee of under $10 was due, was not paid, they slap on a hefty $50 late fee every month, very soon it balloons to hundreds.

There is a special place reserved in hell for companies that try to bleed you dry with all these hidden fees.

I always adopt the same tactic. I tell them I will be paying the outstanding amount, but that thereafter we would like to cancel the card in protest at the company's conduct. Whenever they hear that, they always fall over themselves to write off all the oustanding sums (We have a very good credit history) to forestall the cancellation. I've recently added a new twist. After they have committed to writing off the outstanding sums, I cancel the card anyway :)

"...What I recall was a situation where just about every source of information was shouting out that crazy loans were THE way to buy houses, that anyone who did buy a house was guaranteed to make a pile of money, and that nothing could possibly go wrong. The few people who dared to say otherwise were subject to a storm of scorn and ridicule.

It's easy to say in hindsight that people who took risky mortgages were foolish, but how exactly did we expect them to figure this out in advance?..."

There is an element of truth to that. It continually amazes me that in this day and age basic money management hasn't been included in the standard school curricula. After I graduated from college, I was able to witness first hand several close college friends, smart people all, run their lives into the ground because they lived beyond their means, or blithely accepted reassurances from their mortgage brokers that they could afford THAT house!

I will say this. The entire real estate industry preys on individuals with poor economic literacy. But this isn't borne of dishonesty or malice. The way I see it, the brokers/agents/ banks genuinely believed they were peddling a good deal that couldn't go wrong. Most of them have only known the real estate bubble of the past two decades with ever rising house prices. They drank the Kool-Aid, internalised it, then started serving it to everyone around them.

Sure, some Voices in the Wilderness tried to warn us (e.g. Krugman). These are persons with naturally skeptical minds, a sound understanding of economics, finance, and the precarious systemic fault lines in the whole system. However, to a general public lacking in basic economic literacy, it all sounds like gibberish. "What? Current account deficits? Monetarists? The Chicago School? Credit Default Swaps? Derivatives? Bretton Woods? Reserve Currency?" That stuff, they don't understand. House prices consistently rising over the medium term, that they understand.

I think the first step towards avoiding a future crisis would be to make basic money management and economic literacy part of the school curricula, if only that our children will have the tools to avoid the mistakes of their parents. Failing which, if nothing else, follow the mantra that I personally have always lived by - "IF SOMETHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS. THERE ARE NO FREE RIDES"