At first, he doesn't spend much money. He invests $2,000 in an Internet music start-up, cashing out when it returns almost twice its value. But soon, the easy money of the market becomes too attractive to pass up. Justin ratchets up the stakes. He aims for highflying quick hits -- mostly dot-coms -- and by the middle of 2000, he has used a dozen credit cards to buy $70,000 in stock.

"I'm living proof that even a monkey couldn't have lost money in the market when it was going up," he says, recalling what it was like to see his portfolio's value reach $220,000.

Then the market crashed. Justin, who makes $35,000 a year, held on. He started moving his debt around, switching to credit card issuers with low introductory rates, then bailing to others when the offers ended. He posted sticky notes all over his house to remind him when the deals went from, say, 2.9 percent to 18.5. He kept an elaborate notebook detailing which stocks he bought with which credit cards, and ultimately figured the dip would rise.

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"Everyone was saying, 'Stay in, don't get out,' so I'm thinking, 'Let it ride,'" he says. "I did the math and it was like 'Whatever, I'm having no trouble paying the minimum and they all have pretty good APRs of around 8 percent.' It seemed like a small price to pay."

And it was -- until the credit cards pulled the plug. About six months ago, the revolving door of credit slammed shut. Every credit card issuer stopped offering Justin cheap annual percentage rates, or even new cards. Justin continued to pay down his debt, but in March he gave in. Distraught, watching the market dive to ever-lower depths and with no one else to borrow from, Justin contacted a bankruptcy lawyer.

"I found myself with the following choice: Maintain good credit while watching everything I earn go to the credit cards, or declare bankruptcy, ruin my credit but get back my life," he says. After struggling with guilt and "old-fashioned feelings of honor and responsibility," he says, "I chose the latter. It's humiliating. My own stupidity, shortsightedness and greed caused my downfall."

Justin is a member of the (no longer card-carrying) hangover generation -- young, college-educated professionals who charged their way through the boom, only to end up busted in the crash. So far, they've been largely invisible. Public debate over credit, debt and bankruptcy has tended to focus on only two types of people: rich manipulators who use bankruptcy to protect their multimillion-dollar homes and lavish lifestyles, and the middle-aged and downtrodden who go bankrupt because of an illness, layoff, divorce or other unforeseen tragedy. But the ranks of the young and restlessly broke are beginning to swell.

More than 615,000 people under 35 filed for bankruptcy last year alone. That's about half of the nation's total filings, an increase of more than 40 percent since 1991, according to Harvard Law School studies. And with overall bankruptcy rates up 20 percent in the first three months of 2001, their numbers are projected to go higher.

"Generation in debt" or some other negative label might soon supersede labels like "Gen X or Gen Y," says Robert Manning, an economic sociologist at the University of Houston and the author of "Credit Card Nation." And if these wrinkle-free failures -- who have already gone from slackers to high rollers to slackers again -- aren't feeling so exuberant anymore, who can blame them? Their lives are about to get worse. A new bill moving through Congress -- which President Bush has promised to sign -- may make it even harder for them to work their way out of the morass of credit card debt.

Seemingly bought with $37.7 million in campaign contributions, the bill would protect credit card companies by holding consumers responsible for the companies' overgenerous credit lines, essentially providing the companies with an insurance policy for their risky business practices. If it becomes law, everyone who earns more than a state's median income -- about $39,000 in California, far less than the average income of a San Francisco dot-commer -- could be forced to pay at least 25 percent of his credit card debt, and maybe all of it -- regardless of what kind of financial peril that puts the person in. The bankruptcy court, once a place that gave out second chances, could become nothing more than a glorified collection agency.

Because young people are the first fired and last hired, because they came of age in an era of go-go economics and since they're already burdened with record-setting levels of college debt, "they're the bill's biggest losers," Manning says. Even those with high salaries "are fundamentally screwed."

Maybe profligate dot-commers should be forced to do penance for their conspicuous consumption. But doing so, say experts, would burden the overall economy. People paying off massive debts aren't saving for their children's college educations, buying homes, keeping consumer confidence high or saving for retirement.

In the long run, "we'll all end up paying for them," says Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School who regularly conducts bankruptcy surveys. "We won't leave them to die; we won't put them on the streets. We'll put up the money."

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