Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes

CHAPTER 2

THINKING CLEARLY ABOUT USURY AND CONSUMER CREDIT

The moral struggle with debt is as American as apple pie. “Come into [debt] with the pace of a Tortoise,” preached Puritan Cotton Mather in 1716, “and get out of it with the flight of an Eagle.”¹ Two generations later, the American Founders were still preaching the dangers of debt. Benjamin Franklin depicted it as a despotic master. “Maintain your Independency,” he warned. “Be frugal and free.”² Many of us have been raised to believe that both lending and borrowing are vaguely unsavory. But debt’s bad rap is hardly something American or something new. Human beings have been arguing about the morality of moneylending since money was first invented. Invariably, the lead character in these ...