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Bernanke coming to Charlotte

By Melissa Hankins - bio l email

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - A major meeting of financial minds is happening here, in Charlotte.

Banking big wigs and financial whizzes gathered together today to try to tackle what just might be the most pressing problem in America right now - how are we going to rebuild our credit market?

Tomorrow, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will join the group, but today they talked about the credit conundrum.

Here's the problem: if we're going to climb out of this recession, we need to spend. If people are going to spend, they need credit. But giving too much credit to a society of spenders...well, it built us up, but it also brought us down. Wells Fargo Chief Economist John Silvia says society needs to adjust its perspective.

"A poor family in America, over forty percent of them have two Tv's. Alright, that's poor? I mean, the kids all have ipods. One of their Tvs is probably a flat panel Tv. They have cable in the TV plus they have sixteen movie channels," Silvia said at the conference. "And so yeah, we have a whole bunch of people trying to live that upper middle class lifestyle that took on a lot of debt to do it."

So how do we change that?

"Well I think for some people it's just being more realistic," Silvia says. "For others, they will continue. We always want people to strive to live that higher lifestyle, but not using debt or credit. That's the trick, ok. You work harder. You save a little bit more."

And you use savings instead of debt to achieve the lifestyle you're aiming for.

Which might not sound like the hardest concept in the world, taking a year or two to, say, save the money you need to buy a car...paying cash for it instead of financing...but think about it, Silvia says, and you'll realize he's talking about totally reversing the way our society works.