It's interesting to re-read some of this in light of the last few years.
I suppose you can split financial advice into basic facts including tax treatment but the rest is taking a view/position on direction or level of risk. Any conclusion needs to be supported by evidence and reasoning for it to be credible.
One of my colleagues mentioned CDS (credit default swaps) market was going to blow up a few years back. He didn't say why, he didn't
know why. Had he had discovered and explained the way these contracts are structured then I certainly would have said there was a reasonable chance of it happening.
In many way Bravo73's spot on, a lot of investors/speculators/(choose your favourite word) discovered the (addictive) properties of leverage and made far larger amounts of money then they could have done without it.
As for 18 year olds and affordability, it sounds like in the US they would lend to anyone and in the UK with self-certification (US translation, liar loans), interest only mortgages, buy to let frenzy i'd imagine it could have been done perhaps with some short-term money (from a relative). In some US states this would be risk free to borrower due to non-recourse legislation, in the UK personal bankruptcy would allow someone with nothing else to lose the chance to take higher risks. There are some parallels here with certain parts of the finance industry where employees have upside but little downside as the shareholders take that and at some size the state (tax payer
) takes it after that.
An interesting, if irrelevant, nuance is student debt treatment. This is often external to bankruptcy or similar processes to prevent abuse.
There were some excellent charts on BBC Newsnight last night from economists showing their favourite visualisations of data and some very concise observations/conclusions. It includes one with the often ignored private sector debt in the UK.
BBC News - Top economists reveal their graphs of 2011
Not often you hear Gillian Tett talking about porn on TV, "This isn't chart porn, it's chart manga!"
UPDATE: it's make or break time for the dodgy cds market.
BBC News - How to love a Greek default