Borrow: The American Way of Debt

Borrow: The American Way of Debt

by Louis Hyman
Borrow: The American Way of Debt

Borrow: The American Way of Debt

by Louis Hyman

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Overview

In this lively history of consumer debt in America, economic historian Louis Hyman demonstrates that today’s problems are not as new as we think.
 
Borrow examines how the rise of consumer borrowing—virtually unknown before the twentieth century—has altered our culture and economy. Starting in the years before the Great Depression, increased access to money raised living standards but also introduced unforeseen risks. As lending grew more and more profitable, it displaced funds available for business borrowing, setting our economy on an unsustainable course. Told through the vivid stories of individuals and institutions affected by these changes, Borrow charts the collision of commerce and culture in twentieth-century America, giving an historical perspective on what is new—and what is not—in today’s economic turmoil.

A Paperback Original

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307744906
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 01/24/2012
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 200
Sales rank: 940,572
File size: 4 MB

About the Author

Louis Hyman attended Columbia University, where he received a BA in history and mathematics. A former Fulbright scholar and a consultant at McKinsey & Co., he received his PhD in American history in 2007 from Harvard University. He is currently an assistant professor in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where he teaches history.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction: Everything Old Is New Again
 
“Dick” and “Jane” Smith met shortly after they had both moved to the city, coming upon each other in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Romantic sparks flew, declarations of love were exchanged, rings and vows followed—and then they began their search for a home of their own where they would start their new life together.

Dick hadn’t gone to college, but he had recently found work in a new industry that was sweeping the country. The company’s IPO a few years back had been one of the most successful in history and he was going to help manufacture the killer product that, as one of his executives had said in his firm’s annual report, had “given us all something worth working for.” Dick and Jane, like the rest of the country, were caught up in the heady optimism of what newspaper pundits said was a New Era.

Flush with love and short on cash, the Smiths went their local bank to find out if they could get a mortgage. The home that they wanted was expensive, like all houses these days, but the Smiths knew that houses were a good investment. Prices had gone through the roof in the past few years and real estate was always a sure thing. “You can’t make more land!” Jane remembered her father always saying.

At the bank, the Smiths met with a well-dressed mortgage officer. Looking over the application, the mortgage officer asked them far fewer questions than they had expected: how long had he had his job, how long had they lived at their address, how much did he make? After a few calculations, the mortgage officer somberly informed Dick and Jane that an “amortized” mortgage—one in which they repaid against both interest and principal every month—would not get them the house they wanted. Dick’s income was just not enough to cover it.

But the Smiths didn’t have to worry. The bank offered another, better option that most smart people were using these days: an interest-only “balloon” mortgage. With a balloon mortgage, Dick and Jane could buy the house immediately, sleeping soundly with the knowledge that their household income had nowhere to go but up, right alongside real estate values. And, when the time for bigger payments finally came a few years down the road, they could simply refinance with a new loan that was just as affordable as the first. Why pay off the house when they would probably just sell it in a few years, anyhow?

In fact they would have to refinance since the loan was only for four years, but that wouldn’t be a problem at all. The mortgage officer explained, in confident tones, that refinancing would never be a problem again because banks had started issuing bonds to finance customers’ mortgages. Investors were always looking for a good deal, and real estate was a sure thing.

Four years! Dick would almost certainly move up in his burgeoning high-tech industry in that time. Jane already envisioned a bigger space, the envy of her sisters. The couple looked at each other knowingly, trusting in the guidance of the mortgage officer, and signed the papers that he offered to them.
Dick and Jane thought they couldn’t go wrong. They were in the middle of one of the greatest housing booms in American history, with home values seeming to double every time they turned around. Developers couldn’t buy houses fast enough. Smart buyers would act fast, they thought, before home prices rose even more. There was no risk, only reward.

Dick and Jane moved into their house, and Dick went to work. But within the year, orders began to slow down. He didn’t lose his job, but his overtime got cut. Then it hit. The big stock market crash didn’t hit him, but it spilled over. Everywhere confidence in the economy slid. The newspaper stopped using “New Era” except in derision. And then, just as he began to look to refinance his house, everything fell apart.

House values began to plummet, balloon mortgages became impossible to refinance, foreclosures in their neighborhood were, seemingly overnight, more common than rare. Like the stock speculators who borrowed on the margin, millions of Americans just like Dick and Jane were living on the margin of their household incomes so that they could “own” their homes. All too late, Dick and Jane realized that they were speculating just like those hucksters on the Street.

Dick walked into the S&L only to find that the mortgage officer had been sacked. His replacement, considerably less friendly than his predecessor, told him in no uncertain terms that he had to come up with the principal or he would be foreclosed on. Dick sputtered. He had done what the man in the suit had told him. How had this happened? Before turning his back and returning to his work, the new guy at the bank told Dick that investors no longer wanted to buy real estate bonds. The well was dry. Without mortgage funds to lend, the bank had to collect.

When the bank repossessed their dream house, Dick and Jane didn’t have even the most basic of personal luxuries—no iPod, no netbook, not even a hand-me-down BlackBerry. Desperate as they were, they literally couldn’t even give these things up in one last fruitless effort to save their home. After all, none of these things would be invented until the next century.

It was 1932.

Dick had gotten his manufacturing job at General Motors in Flint only a few years earlier. Like Jane, Dick was part of a broad population shift from the country to the city in the early part of the century that tipped the census, for the first time, in favor of urban America. Moving to the city, Dick and Jane did what so many of their generation did, they borrowed.

As investors fled the mortgage markets, the U.S. housing industry fell apart—not initially from unemployment, but from a credit crisis. By 1933, the national foreclosure rate had reached 1,000 homes a day. After four years of withdrawals that withered even the sturdiest of mortgage funds, in 1933 the U.S. housing industry was effectively dead, having contracted to just 1/10 what it had been only a few years before. A third of all American families who qualified for “relief” at the height of the Great Depression landed there by losing a construction job. Dick didn’t work in construction, but his business, building automobiles, was hit just as hard.

The 1920s were not only similar to today in terms of young love and mortgage debt, but for all forms of debt. In fact, it was the very spread of automobile debt that gave Dick his job in the first place. Automobile finance emerged after World War I as one of the hottest industries, spreading its methods in just a few years to nearly all other household durables. Vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and oil burners could all be had on the installment plan. The American savings rate dropped precipitously and nearly all of it went into installment credit.

Then, as now, critics of debt predicted economic catastrophe and railed against moral decline. The young couple’s choices were expressed most damningly by one of America’s great industrialists, the chief competitor of Dick’s employer GM, a man who by his popularization of the automobile had perhaps done more than any other single person to put us in debt—Henry Ford. While Ford may have pushed cars, he never pushed debt. Ford so loathed the sapping of freedom that debt represented for him that for most of the 1920s he refused to sell his cars on financing plans, and in the process nearly bankrupted Ford Motor Company. His hostility to finance, coupling an anti-Semitic hostility to Jewish bankers and a mechanic’s hostility to anyone who didn’t make anything, hobbled the company. That Dick could get a job at General Motors, which believed in debt wholeheartedly, is largely a testament to Ford’s hostility to consumer credit.

In the 1920s, Americans, both borrowers and lenders, discovered new ways to finance consumer credit, and, of course, it was only the beginning. Debt was everywhere, and its ubiquity was made possible by changes in finance, manufacturing, and law that had occurred after the First World War. High interest on consumer loans had long been illegal in the U.S., but around World War I, progressive reformers, seeking to drive out loan sharks, pushed states across the country to raise the legal interest rate. Now able to lend money legally, at rates which could be profitable, new consumer finance industries sprung up overnight. The legal changes coincided with a new generation of cars and electrical appliances that were both expensive and mass produced. The installment credit allowed manufacturers to sell these new wonders at a volume, and consumers could afford them because of the
easy monthly payments. What ultimately made all this lending possible was that lenders could now, for the first time, resell their debt.

Networks of finance stood behind each consumer purchase. When Dick bought his first car, the dealer had him sign some papers. Dick agreed to pay for the car over 24 months and to pay some additional fees, but that was it. Dick never knew where the money came from, and if he wondered at all he probably thought it came from the dealer. But the dealer took that agreement and sold it, the next day, to the General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC). The dealer didn’t have the capital to finance all his customers, but GMAC did. GMAC could issue bonds in the market or use its own profits to finance its dealers. As networks developed for all forms of debt—mortgages, cars, charge—consumers found that credit became cheaper and easier to use. Retailers and financiers used credit to drive their sales and their profits. Some networks emerged from the private sector, like car financing, while others emerged from the federal government, like mortgages. Wherever they came from, the new networks of debt made possible this consumer utopia. But when those networks failed, as with the resale of mortgage bonds during the Great Depression, credit could just as quickly turn dystopian.
 

This picture could have hung in any small late nineteenth-century shop—maybe a grocer, maybe a hardware store—anybody that didn’t want to give more credit to his customers. While cash loans were illegal, credit in the nineteenth century was retail credit—but its logic was nearly the mirror-image of today. While today credit-lending is profitable, in the nineteenth century it was anything but. The well-fed, prosperous guy only sells for cash while the emaciated, nervous guy with the mice sells on credit.

The picture’s message was clear: we don’t want to lend. Yet its logic of lending, like ours today, is grounded in a very particular set of historical circumstances. Borrowing is more than numbers, it is a set of relationships between people and institutions. More than any graph, this picture, if we can understand it, clarifies the differences between then and now—and how debt has changed.

Shopping every few days for food—generally the largest portion of an 1890 budget—customers could quickly build up a tab. On payday, wives were supposed to stop by and settle the bill. Yet many did not. Grocers charged higher prices for credit purchases, but there was no interest—interest would have violated the usury laws. So if someone paid every week or didn’t pay for months, it was the same price—and the same profit or lack thereof. Shopkeepers could quickly lose money on credit sales because the money that they lent was their own.

Customer credit came out of the grocer’s own pocket. As you can see in the picture, the credit lender’s vault is empty while his basket is filled with IOUs. Americans didn’t have credit cards. No bank would lend the skinny guy money to finance his customers. No third party would buy the debt and try to collect what was owed. Loans were not commodities bought and sold as they are today. In our economy, financiers figure out ways to get us to borrow and then resell that debt to investors. Debt is produced like any other commodity—shoes, steel, computers—for the market. Buyers of our debt—whether mortgages, credit cards, or car loans—evaluate it like any other investment weighing the return against the risk. And today’s debt is easy to resell. Then, consumer debt was business error. That is to say, bankers and entrepreneurs didn’t think debt was a good investment. It was not a good use of their scarce, constrained capital. Consumer debt was a way to lose money. If we can understand how this grocer turned into our retail life today, we can understand how small loans became big business. We can understand how creditors became fat.

Who would invest in this debt? The history of how corner grocers, and all the other retailers, began to resell their debt is a complex one spanning the century, from the first automobiles to our present financial crisis. While borrowing might be as ancient as currency itself, markets for consumer debt are as modern as a bobbed haircut. In the 1920s, a few different changes in business and law collided to move personal debt from the margin of capitalism to its center, taking a position alongside commercial and national debt. Usury laws had limited interest rates for centuries, but progressive reformers, seeking to provide a profitable alternative to the loan shark, pushed for higher rates. As states raised usury limits and institutions began to buy personal debt from retailers, debt escaped the personal and became a commodity to be bought and sold. Once debt could be sold, it could be invested in. Debt became a place for investors to put money, connecting it with the most basic operations of capitalism.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Everything Old Is New Again 3

Chapter 1 When Personal Debt Was Really Business Debt 17

(2000 B.C.-A.D. 1920)

Chapter 2 Everybody Paid Cash for the Model T 41

(1908-1929)

Chapter 3 Fannie Mae Can Save America 60

(1924-1939)

Chapter 4 How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Debt 95

(1945-1960)

Chapter 5 Discounted Goods and Distributed Credit 121

(1959-1970)

Chapter 6 Bringing Good Things to Life 148

(1970-1985)

Chapter 7 If Only the Gnomes Had Known 180

(1968-1986)

Chapter 8 The House of Credit Cards 217

(1986-2008)

Conclusion: Turning the Magic of Borrowing into the Reality of Prosperity 248

Notes 259

Acknowledgments 279

Index 281

Illustration Credits 293

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An entertaining romp through the history and culture of credit. . . . It's such a great book.”
The Wall Street Journal
 
“Hyman has written a breezy book that goes deeper. . . . an accessible and well-written primer on a vast history, with plenty of cautionary tales for those who would fix what's broken in our financial system, as well as what isn't.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“The story of how Americans learned to love debt—and became dangerously addicted to it. Anyone who has ever wondered how we got into the mess we are now in must read this powerful book.”
—Lizabeth Cohen, author of A Consumers’ Republic

“Stocked with colorful personalities and trenchant insights, Hyman’s lucid, entertaining, and timely treatise illuminates the murky processes by which debt became the troubled center of economic life.”
Publishers Weekly

“An evenhanded account aimed at the general reader baffled by today’s economic crisis. From Model-Ts to TVs to McMansions, Hyman uncovers the credit story behind all the glittering prizes and offers a prescription to prevent the American Dream from turning into the American Nightmare.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Clearly written, carefully researched. . . . Readers will come to understand that credit difficulties are not new. . . [Borrow] offers solutions to this seemingly intractable problem.” 
Library Journal 

“[Borrow] is the sort of mind-blower of a book it’ll likely force you to rethink and reconsider how you see things for a bit. . . . Hyman’s hugely compelling book will ultimately hip you to the fact that the scare-tactic stories about debt and everything else are infinitely, infinitely more complicated than we typically consider. . . . One reads Borrow with a sense of whiplash. . . . Maybe the most necessary nonfiction reading at present.”
The Kenyon Review
 
“This comprehensive—yet extremely readable—history of American attitudes toward credit and debt is fascinating, especially as it stresses how our attitudes toward borrowing have always been undercut by our economy’s relentless need to grow. This is a must-read primer on the American way of buying for anyone who resists economic texts.”
Sacramento News & Review 
 
“A fresh perspective on the epic changes in American culture wrought by consumer finance. . . . Original reporting. . . . Hyman has researched his subject deeply, and his diligence shows.”
The New Republic 
 
“The author traces consumer debt beginning in the 1910s and through the 1920s, when personal loans became legal and mortgages were in demand. After WWII, consumption continued to be financed by debt, particularly television sets. . . . As the century progressed, we learn about the rise of discount stores over department stores, loans financed by issuing corporate debt, securitization, and credit cards. Hyman indicates that although policymakers declare the worst of our current financial crisis ended in mid-2009, important causes continue, and he concludes, ‘Debt, along with every other aspect of capitalism, is something that we have created and have the capacity to master.’ This is an excellent book.”
—Booklist

“Informative and entertaining. . . . Hyman not only traces how consumer debt reached this point but also what might be done to reverse the mess.”
—BookLoons.com  
 
“Informed and articulate. . . . An essential story of the American economy. . . . [Hyman] comprehensively examines the role of debt in shaping the American economy, as well as the rise and recent precipitous decline of the nation’s middle class. . . . A critical academic investigation into an obscure arena of American historiography that has largely been neglected. But it is also an accessible story concerning a timely economic reality of today’s American experience.”
Newark Star-Ledger 
 
“Insightful and brilliant. . . . A fair and balanced historical appraisal of the role of credit in the American economy. . . . This book is a must read for anyone who cares about the state of the economy, and the role that debt plays in both its growth and its economic depressions.”
—Wayne Hurlburt, BlogBusinessWorld 

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