This week

You're still in debt, aren't you? Apparently, we all are. Just days ago it was announced that we find credit cards "irresistible", owe an average of £1,140 each on plastic, and have caused outstanding debt to soar by 62% in the past four years.

The government, the commentators and the Bank of England are worried about this morass of debt. But that is window dressing and bogus concern: if our economy is so heavily driven by consumer spending, why would the government want to curb it? Witness the cheering that goes on each time high-street spending rises; the dismay when it dips. The implied message is clear: we want you to spend, and we don't care what your credit line is. Indeed, the real attitude to our overspending is properly comparable to the approach taken by the glossy magazines: one piece cheerily explaining how to get to grips with your finances wedged between a dozen others persuading you to buy another "vital" but pointless item.

We have never been as stupid with our money as we are today. And such ignorance is dangerous at a time when access to credit has never been easier. We regularly receive letters from banks offering instant cash, and it's impossible to turn on the TV without seeing those trustworthy celebrities Carol Vorderman and Carol Smillie promoting easy credit.

But the maddening thing is not that we're all chronically in debt and haemorrhaging money. It's that a few people are creaming it while we're stuck in the red. The people who top Britain's income lists are the ones peddling us the very things we should be resisting. High on the list are the men who head mobile phone companies and retail chains. John Caudwell, who owns Europe's largest phone distributor, Phones 4U, was Britain's second-biggest earner last year, according to the Sunday Times paylist, making £397m; Philip Green, who owns Bhs and the Arcadia group, came fourth with £171m.

These men doubtless work hard for their money, but if we were more clued up over cash, would they still be so flush? Perhaps there is there a correlation between our debt and their wealth, to do with the fact that we are getting fleeced for the pleasure of spending. Look at those ridiculous mobile phone tariffs, the extra mark-ups for fancy packaging, and the banks slapping on charges at every opportunity.

Debt is one big money-spinner, and it's the poorest sectors of society that get penalised the most. According to the New Economics Foundation, the nation's poorest households are at the mercy of a cabal of moneylenders, cheque cashers and dubious secondary mortgage lenders, charging interests rates of between 60% and 200%, and collecting a tidy £17bn between them. Britain, unlike other G7 nations that place a ceiling on interest rates, looks the other way while such remorseless profiting from poverty takes place. And this situation could so easily be reversed by capping rates, or by expanding the government's social fund - which offers an interest-free credit line to those on income support - to reach those on tax credits and low incomes.

Meanwhile, for the comfortable classes, there is something ridiculous and insidious about working longer, harder hours just to end up more in debt. It's a crazy spin cycle of being too busy to have any real grasp on cash flow, while blowing those slogged-for notes on the baubles and conveniences that are supposed to compensate for all that graft. The problem, according to the Consumer Credit Counselling Service, is that we've all got our heads stuck in the sand, ignoring the alarming stream of bills in what's termed "the envelope behind the clock syndrome". But while such services advocate budgeting and planning, we yawn and hit the high street. And while we continue to borrow to sustain a desirable lifestyle, a few financial canny men are laughing, very literally, all the way to the bank.

rachel@journos.org