This holiday season chances are your credit card is going to get an extra workout.
Despite those that seem to actually want our economy to be in the doldrums – it isn’t.
We’ve just had our 50th consecutive month of job growth in the United States (the longest on record) – and we had an impressive 3.9% growth in our GDP in the third quarter of this year. Who says those Bush tax cuts don’t work :-)
You can get some more info about our economy here.
I know those of us in the Golden State have some economic challenges – believe me, I’m watching our state budget deficit get worse every day. But, if the shopping frenzy this past couple of days in my area is anything like the rest of the state – some credit cards are going to melt.
Lots of consumers are going to hand over their cards to clerks. People will happily be giving their numbers over the phone and, of course, those credit card numbers will be flying over the internet.
All of that is good. Great, actually. Our free market economy is based on robust consumerism – buy, buy, buy – sell, sell, sell – all is wonderful. Everyone wins. More jobs are created. Our quality of life is improved. We all become wealthier (even those that don’t want this country to thrive [and you know who you are]), and America becomes greater every day.
But, with all this frantic economic activity, there are some real serious risks.
One of the
worst – meanest and nastiest is identity theft.
We cringe when we hear from constituents who have become victims and are desperate to try and get their own identities back. Some identity thieves are so aggressive when they take over control of someone else’s credit – that the thief ends up making all the decisions – and the real person can’t seem to stop it.
This is one of the messiest crimes to recover from. I know people who are still trying to clean up their credit years after they fell victim to identity theft.
The best thing to do is avoid becoming a victim in the first place.
To help people to avoid becoming victims, I dedicated an entire section to my state website to identity theft.
Check out the site and you’ll find information about what identity theft is, how to avoid it, what to do if you become a victim of it and we give you links to law enforcement and credit agencies if you need their assistance.
We’re very proud of the thoroughness of the site. Spend a few minutes reading it and hopefully your identity will always be your own.
And make sure you do your part this shopping season to grow our economy. California needs your money :-)