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Why is it possible to just take out a ton of credit cards, max them out and default in 7 years?
Well, primarily because that's fraud and fraud prevents a debtor from receiving a discharge in bankruptcy court.  Fraud would be pretty easy to prove if you didn't have an income change and you have several lines of credit opened on and around the same day with almost no payments made toward them.  Additionally, thanks to the reforms of the bankruptcy code, if your income exceeds the median income of your state you'll be forced in to a Chapter 13 and committed to a repayment plan that allocates all of your "disposable income" to your creditors. Now if whoever posted that will attempt to simply not pay then negotiate repayment plans with their creditors the process will last far longer than 7 years.  It takes a long time to be in default for enough time that a consumer creditor will negotiate the debt and this is assuming the creditor doesn't sue you and get a judgement which could apply liens to any property you may own.  The judgment(s) will likely cause you to pursue bankruptcy anyway; only now you're at least a few years beyond the point at which you ruined your credit.