As Wall Street crumbles from the weight of the sub-prime mortgage market, it struck a chord with me about the use of credit in general.

Have you seen the recent commercial ad campaign about the smooth running retail machine where everything is flowing beautifully until a customer presents cash to the cashier, then suddenly the line comes to a screeching halt and the place falls apart?

Credit cards are great in many respects: they make online transactions possible; they convince us that the reward programs that they offer are worth the fees that we pay to have them; they give us a nice monthly summary of our spending; and most of all, they delay the pain of having to pay for things when we buy them.

As the owner of a small business, I have a different bent on credit. They are much slower than cash. You have to run the card, wait for an over-taxed phone system to clear them, go through the useless process of getting a signature, and then print the receipt. Not to mention they are extremely expensive to offer. You have to buy the machines, pay for the paper, and then both the customer and the retailer incur ridiculous charges.

In the course of a year we pay over $25,000 in bank fees just to process, clear, and deposit credit card charges. That is a huge expense, and one that we have to pass on as part of doing business. Not to mention that the credit card companies are so unregulated that the consumer is at their mercy.

I would make the case that credit cards are bad for the consumer, and bad for business, and that for day-to-day spending, cash is still king!

Mark Stevens