What I am currently following-

Economic News and Job Reports-CNN Money
Businessweek- Business News, Stock Market, and financial advice
Business and Financial News- New York Times
Forbes- Business Information and Business News
A National Debt of $14 trillion? Try $211 Trillion- NPR

I agree with the film Maxed Out for the most part. But I also think it is peoples own fault for getting that far into debt, but it depends on the situation. The film Maxed Out was an effective piece of rhetoric because it through the use of pathos the film was able to sway its’ audience into thinking that credit cards are bad. To support their claims they used authorities, testimony and statistics as evidence. The main idea of the movie was to prove to viewers that credit-card companies exploit consumers and that America has become a nation of debt. Both of those statements could be considered as claims of fact and claims of value. I think they are more claims of fact because there is evidence to prove that credit cards are a problem and that America is a nation of debt. I think the whole movie was a claim of policy because the movie was made so the issue could be brought to peoples attention, the claim was that credit cards are a problem and if we do not gain control of them this could happen and then that is where they used claims of testimony. They showed footage of real debt collectors for credit card companies and they used professors from schools such as Harvard to establish their credibility. They used testimony of real American families that have been negatively affected by credit card debt. Their stories were meant to appeal to the viewers emotions (pathos). I thought it was creative that they told the stories of two college students who felt so overcome by debt, that they took their own lives, because it made it real for me to see that it affects young people to not just adults. They showed statistics of how many people use credit cards, how many have debt, and so on. This was effective in my opinion because of all the evidence they used to support their claims. In any argument that is made there needs to be claims and support, which this movie had.