It seems like pretty much everybody – homeowners, students, those who are ill and without health insurance, and, of course, credit card holders – is up to their neck in debt that can never be repaid. 77% of US households are seriously indebted and one in seven Americans has been pursued by debt collectors. The major banks are bigger and more profitable than before the 2008 crash, and legislators are all but powerless to bring them to heel. In this forceful, eye-opening survey, Andrew Ross contends that we are in the cruel grip of a creditocracy – where the finance industry commandeers our elected governments and where the citizenry have to take out loans to meet their basic needs. The implications of mass indebtedness for any democracy are profound, and history shows that whenever a creditor class becomes as powerful as Wall Street, the result has been debt bondage for the bulk of the population. Following in the ancient tradition of the jubilee, activists have had some success in repudiating the debts of developing countries. The time is ripe, Ross argues, for a debtors’ movement to use the same kinds of moral and legal arguments to bring relief to household debtors in the North. After examining the varieties of lending that have contributed to the crisis, Ross suggests ways of lifting the burden of illegitimate debts from our backs. Just as important, Creditocracy outlines the kind of alternative economy we need to replace a predatory debt-money system that only benefits the 1%.
What emerges is a hard-hitting assessment of dramatic times, and a message of hope for the future." -- Jeremy Corbyn Len McCluskey is the standout trade unionist of his era.
While neoliberalism has become somewhat of an academic buzzword in recent years, this book offers a rich and multilayered introduction to what is arguably the most pressing issue of our times.
In this multidisciplinary collection, seventeen leading thinkers provide substance and depth to the recent outburst of fast talk on the topic of anti-Americanism by analyzing its history and currency in five key global regions: the Middle ...
So on the day NAFTA went into effect, thousands of people of Chiapas said “Ya Basta!”—enough already! They seized public squares and engaged in a fourdaylong armed insurrection declaring a region with around five million inhabitants to ...
Collectively, these essays raise provocative questions about how we should imagine capitalism in the twenty-first century.
... credit card balance every month.” In fact, credit customers who do diligently pay off the entirety of their debts are called in the industry “deadbeats,” because they appear to get credit for free. For Ross, the ideal citizens in a ...
Shaun McKinnon, “Arizona Drought Prompts Unusual Colorado River Water Proposal,” Arizona Republic (December 26, 2010). A strong La Niňa in the winter months increased the snowpack in the Upper Basin and sent higher than average flows of ...
... credit card issuers don't want us to pay off our credit card balance every month. Customers who do this diligently are known in the industry as “deadbeats,” because they appear to get credit for free. The ideal citizens in a creditocracy ...
Designed as a uniquely print-digital hybrid publication, this Keywords volume collects 114 essays, each focused on a single term such as “America,” “culture,” “diversity,” or “religion.” More than forty of the essays have ...
All feature in Andrew Ross's lively history and critique of modern American culture. Andrew Ross examines how and why the cultural authority of modern intellectuals is bound up with the changing face of popular taste in America.