Credit Card Nation is the first comprehensive look at an ongoing social and economic crisis-America's escalting dependence on credit. By locating consumer debt within the context of corporate and governmental debt.

As both the twenty-first century and the new millennium opened and the old eras passed into history, individuals and organizations throughout the world advanced their listings of the most significant people and events in their respective specialties. Possibly more important, the tum of the clock and calendar also offered these same observers a good reason to glance into the crystal ball. Presumably, the past is of greatest interest to most people when it permits better understanding of the present, and maybe even limited insight into the outlook. In keeping with the reflective mood of the time, the staff and friends of the Credit Research Center (CRC) at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business noted that the beginning of the new millennium also marked the beginning of the second quarter-century of the Center's existence. The Center began at the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University in 1974 and moved to the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University in 1997. The silver anniversary of its founding offered the occasion for creating more than another listing of significant past accomplishments and milestones. Rather, it offered the opportunity and, indeed, a mandate for CRC as an academic research center, to undertake a retrospective and future look into the status of research questions pertaining to consumer credit markets. For this reason, the Center organized a research conference which was held in Washington, D. C.

Based on income alone, nearly half of all adults in the United States can be considered "middle class," complete with the reassurance of a steady job, the ability to raise a family, and the comforts of owning a home. And yet, for many, because of structural forces reshaping the finances of the American middle class, the margin between a stable life and a fragile one is narrowing. The new edition of Middle-Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies tells the story of the struggling American middle class by weaving together sociological and economical research, personalized portraits and examples, and a profusion of current data illustrating significant social, economic, and political trends. The authors extend their analysis to include the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus on the effect of race and ethnicity, as well as the ever-increasing costs of housing, health care, and education. In clear, accessible writing, the authors provide a sociological and balanced understanding of the causes and implications of increasing middle class precarity. Middle-Class Meltdown in America is particularly well-suited for courses in sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, and American Studies.

This incisive book gives a comprehensive overview of the regulation of consumer credit in both the US and the UK. It covers policy, procedure and the dynamics of the consumer credit relationship to advocate for a balanced approach in achieving more effective consumer protection.

After a long period of prosperity and steady economic growth, the world's leading economies are now in crisis, and although there will be debate about its origins, the scale and seriousness of the crisis is in no doubt. There is also no doubt that excessive amounts of consumer credit, allied to a weak understanding of how globalised credit markets might react to a crisis, have played a significant part. This book, which is primarily about credit, debt and the trouble they have led to, is written by authors who have specialised in researching into over-indebtedness, that is, situations in which an individual's debt burden has become overwhelming. For these authors the plight of individuals is a primary concern, but the wider issue is how credit is used and how it changes societies. The essays in this volume, addressing topics which are fundamental to our understanding of the current crisis, range widely across the whole sector of consumer finance, including mortgages, 'credit-binges', the regulation of consumer lending, insolvency, repayment plans, debt counselling and much more besides. The conclusions drawn from the book are equally wide-ranging, but above all the lesson learned from these essays is that the financialisation of contemporary life ensures that issues of the appropriate role of credit remain of critical importance in society.

Cross-national analysis of empirical, theoretical, and policy issues in the consumer credit industry, including household debt, credit card usage, and bankruptcy.