As low-brow (or pop-cultural) as this comment might be, I can't help but make the analogy: repo men are the modern day ninja. Being a ninja was never about martial arts; it was about subterfuge, and about protecting the assets of your lord by any means necessary. In the modern age, the lords are the banks.
From what I recall, being a ninja was about being sneaky and undignified enough to succeed. Being a ninja was about dressing up as a gardener so nobody would suspect that you were about to shiv them with an abnormally pointy trowel. Being a ninja was about setting off firecrackers as a distraction -- people assume that explosions are important, and ninjas knew this. Being a ninja was about hiding in an outhouse so you could assassinate some dude from inside of his toilet (holy shit!). Ninjas were clever bastards, not necessarily badasses.
Tom Wolfe wrote a book called "A Man in Full" that had a very similar character. He said that the formerly wealthy hang on to their private jets harder than anything else. They even went as far as creating fake airline stubs for debt collection meetings to act like they were flying commercial. Quite entertaining.