Word: crediters
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Much of U.S. business prosperity is due directly to credit-fueled consumer purchasing. The automobile industry this year will sell close to 9,000,000 cars-three-fifths of them on credit. The nation's fastest-growing new industry, color television, this year will sell 2,300,000 sets-more than one-half on credit. Many an American sends his youngsters to college on a "dollars-for-scholars" loan, is up to his eaves in mortgage payments, buys his clothes on the cuff (65% of department-store purchases are charged), and then gets away from...
Obviously, whether debt is moral or immoral depends on its use. It can be highly moral when it implies trust between man and man and a civilized respect for contracts. Some clergymen are a bit embarrassed that in a national rating of 42 types of credit risks, the clergy ranked a mediocre 17th (best risks are business executives, worst are farm laborers). Union Theological Seminary's Professor Roger Shinn says that the key to the moral issue is whether credit enhances or restricts personal freedom. "Debt is wrong if it overburdens and blocks a person and destroys his freedom...
...ability to go into debt has launched many new nations, and preserved or vastly changed old ones. A postwar proliferation of international credit agencies-notably the World Bank - has provided 51% credit that has strung railroads through jungles in Colombia, built highways in Ethiopia, and industrialized Italy's Mezzogiorno. Some countries have borrowed too enthusiastically. Overwhelming debts have brought inflation and economic chaos to Indonesia, Argentina, Ghana and other extravagant governments, which perhaps will never be able...
Significantly, the attitude toward consumer credit in most foreign lands remains nearly medieval. All industrialized countries have taken to installment buying since World War II, but not in the relaxed American manner. In Japan, it is still considered vaguely dishonorable. Even in such countries as France and Mexico, borrowing is for the well-to-do, bankers and borrowers have a well-founded suspicion of each other, and mortgages are high and hard to get. In Germany, where the word for "debt" still retains its Biblical meaning of "guilt" (Schuld), consumer debt averages out to only $32.50 per person. Europe...
...confident handling of credit has been a mighty force in the growth of the domestic American economy, and a decisive reason why the U.S. has expanded faster than Europe. But considerable concern remains that Americans may be getting themselves too deeply in the red. There are three specific worries: 1) that generous credit will lead to the kind of overbuying, overbuilding and overpricing that could set the nation up for inflation and recession; 2) that if recession comes, it could bring a wave of defaults and repossessions; and 3) that if the economy slows down, Americans might sharply cut back...