Credit Card Nation: The Consequences of America’s Addiction to Credit
Review
No interest for one year! No annual fee! No minimum payments for six months! And, if you want to believe Robert Manning, there’s no way out of the debt that we find ourselves in, as individuals and as a country. Credit Card Nation combines debt of every kind–consumer, corporate, and governmental–and creates a vast landscape of profit-spewing lenders and struggling debtors present at every level of economics. Appalling statistics set readers off on a depressing journey: the…
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July 16, 2009 | By admin In Product Reviews |
2.0 out of 5 stars
Much too Verbose
I think I’m getting sick of reading books from Humanities folks, they are also far too verbose. This book is not an exception.
Those of us who have had the distinct priveledge of hearing Manning speak now have this extraordinary study to solidify our understanding of the cult of credit in the United States.
The author’s forceful personality–and his unassailable integrity–come through very strongly here. His insight and compassion for all of us and our obsession for making it in America go to the larger question of how we as driven consumers equate credit with time: the crisis of life spans increasingly regarded as inadequate for experiential fulfillment. No longer is it a question of status, but of opportunity: If we don’t buy/experience this now, we may never be able to again. Manning joins Svevo, Carlo Levi, and Gide in demonstrating how the manipulation and “evocation” of assets reflects a psychological and societal attempt to reduce inner dissonance about our mortality.
Manning shows how our mania for packing our lives with sensations and stimulalting our senses to the hilt is now more about the ACT of buying that possession itself. As a result, the utter contempt extenders of credit have for those in the markets they pursue is no longer sublimated; giving the market “what it wants” has crossed the Styx of “savvy marketing” into an underworld of persuasive exploitation. Manning forces us to acknowledge our addictive propensity for money, whether we are “in glut” with it or want of it. Credit colors who we are with potential of peril for our lives.
Even more, Manning sends us off into thoughts of the US’s own fiscal and public policy, of a government enamored of “personal responsibility” in the administration of entitlement programs, yet rife with cynical hesitation in reducing national debt to the detriment of those who would promote it, promulgate, and perpetuate it. In the end, nothing is simple, and the author leaves us with the stark realization that we are in the eye of a surging whirlpool. He offers no solutions because there aren’t any.
In short, if you have the chance to hear Manning speak, avail yourself of it. In the meantime, be prepared to be enthralled with Credit Card Nation and be disturbed by it. It’s a rare, communicative work of sociological scholarship that any reasonably alert, unflinching reader can grasp immediately and retain.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Robert D. Manning is one of the most influential “public” scholars in the US
Robert D. Manning is a rare combination of influential scholar and public policy “statesmen” whose work has not only inspired hundreds of scholars projects and thousands of media…
Although there is a short attack on Reagan deficit spending during the eighties, this book mainly focuses on America’s increasing dependence on short term debt (i.e. credit cards). Since Mr. Manning is a sociologist he tries to pay particular attention to how societal attitudes have changed. How the puritan ideal of frugality and thrift has been pushed aside for a new philosophy that emphasizes materialism and luxury.
I thought the most interesting chapter did not have to do with credit card debt at all but the peripheral bank industry (check cashing etc..) that are financed by large banking institutions. Manning makes the case that the reason that banks have pulled out of poor areas is not because banks can’t be profitable there, as the industry has long claimed, but because they can make so much more through the loan shark businesses they finance. It makes one think that the U.S. ant-trust division should be more worried about Citibank than Microsoft.
My only gripe with this book was the author’s attack on student credit card debt. He seems to blame the credit card companies way too much. I was not nearly as sympathetic to Manning’s stories of students who needed to buy expensive clothes or go to Europe so they “could fit in”, as I was to people that were laid off and so desperate for money that they had to get into debt.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable information but the writing style is odd
I have no arguments with Prof. Manning’s points, although I suppose I too was less than moved by the stories of college students who had to declare bankruptcy to pay for their bar…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scary stuff
A great overview of the precarious state of credit we’ve reached and how we got here. Good lessons for all: policy-makers, borrowers, lenders, college students.
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Morality Play?
Overall I felt that this book could have been, and should have been, much better. The ever-increasing level of credit-card debt is a real problem, as are the abuses of sub-prime…
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revealing. This should be a wake up call to Congress
Dr. Manning is pointing out a societal problem that is growing like a cancer. Most of us are products of what we have learned from the media advertising about credit cards, and…
2.0 out of 5 stars
not worth reading
The basic thesis of this book, in case you need to be told, is that evil credit card companies are fleecing America and getting away with it, and that those “revolvers” who carry…
4.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive Study of Consumer Debt
A striking and keen assessment of the credit card industry and damning expose’of corporate tactics to lure the unsuspecting and inexperienced into a life of consumerism.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Just a question of free will? NOT!
Several reviewers here of Manning’s *Credit Card Nation* take him to task for proposing sweeping regulatory reforms to get Americans out from under the stupendous national credit…