From the Editor's Desk

How we all got into debt

Student loans continue to burden adults decades after they’ve left school, and credit card debt haunts many Americans. On the flip side, many of us make leveraged investments in our homes, taking out mortgages to buy houses that we expect to appreciate in value. In other words, debt structures American lives in myriad ways. But, as historian Louis Hyman writes, this is a relatively new thing.

In the nineteenth century, Hyman points out, if an individual needed credit, they turned to friends, loan sharks, or local merchants. For corner grocers and country stores, these loans were money-losing propositions with no interest charged. Any institution with a lot of money lent it not to consumers but to businesses.

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