Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #299116 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12
• Released on: 2001-12-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.com
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 years between 1980 and 1994 saw annual consumer charges skyrocket from $170 billion to $581 billion, with the average household carrying over $4,000 in revolving debt. Accompanied by the erasure of nearly $100 billion in corporate debt and tremendous tax cuts for ever-merging conglomerates, the end of the 20th century seems to be just the beginning of an overwhelming cycle. While Manning's book is extensively researched, it is also extremely readable. Individual stories of junk bondsmen, corporate raiders, and middle-class consumers are threaded throughout the pages of charts and statistics, with a few surprises. While most media would have us believe that students who rack up charge accounts are totally irresponsible, the reality is that some of these students are helping their families with cash-advance loans to make mortgage or insurance payments. Emphasis is also placed on the tremendous advertising budgets of credit card companies: Manning comments on "how quickly the cultural norms have changed in the Credit Card Nation," we see a poster insisting "money can't buy you love, but a credit card can get you started." This is not a self-help book, and Manning has no 12-step program for debtors at any level. Credit Card Nation simply tells it as it is. --Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
A sociology professor whose specialty is the effect of credit card debt on college students, Manning expands his focus here to encompass social attitudes toward all types of debt. Suggesting that debt leads not only to financial ruin but also to moral and social degradation, this dense, technical work is filled with jargon (chapter four, for example, is subtitled "Convenience Users and the Ideological Construction of the Moral Divide"). In the first-person interviews with college students, the subjects are rarely allowed to complete a sentence. Instead, Manning embeds phrases from the interviews into his own argument. Since we never learn more than a few facts about each interviewee (not even a last name or college affiliation), they serve as chorus to the monologue rather than adding weight or complexity to Manning's thesis. When relating facts, Manning puts quotation marks around the many terms he disagrees with, conveying his opinion without supporting evidence for his views. Loaded words substitute for exposition: people do not choose to borrow, they are "addicted to credit"; he does not deem them "borrowers," but "users"; no one simply owes money--instead, everyone is "burdened," "oppressed" or "overwhelmed" by debt, even when the debt seems small relative to their assets and income. (Feb. 2)Forecast: Manning's book may interest professional sociologists, but general readers will find it difficult to understand in some places, dogmatic and unsubstantiated elsewhere. However, given its timely topic, the book is likely to receive serious review attention, and will pick up some sales due to Manning's media appearances (he's been featured on ABC World News Tonight, CNN and elsewhere. But the book's academic gloss will keep sales from rising high, despite the millions of Americans suffering from debt overload.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
"Over the last two decades, universal or bank credit cards have played a prominent role in the profound transformation of American attitudes toward saving and debt," states Manning, an economic sociologist. He presents what is essentially an academic paper on the history of credit cards, and what he concludes with are their evils. His research for this book includes hundreds of interviews with people whom he considers neglected voices from different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds throughout the U.S. The author is extremely critical of credit-card-issuing banks and their policies, and he is also critical of mass-marketing campaigns, which he contends powerfully influence the public's belief that short-term consumption is preferable to the pain of producing and that spending is preferable to saving. In this exploration of the dark side of debt, Manning hopes to contribute to a democratic and public discussion of the role of bank policies in everyday lives, although he probably will be preaching to the converted. Mary Whaley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

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. This book could have been much shorter if the author stopped repeating himself and wrote in a less verbose style.

There are a few interesting tidbits of information in the book, but overall its not worth reading.

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 stories but also directly influence public understanding and regulation of financial institutions, the deregulated banking system, subprime lending, and the global dimensions of asset-backed securities.

Author of the widely acclaimed book, CREDIT CARD NATION, and editorial advisor of the powerful documentary, IN DEBT WE TRUST, which is based on his book, Dr. Manning's scholarly and public policy work constitutes a pathbreaking intellectual enterprise: a dispassionate and ongoing investigation of the nature of America's changing attitudes and behaviors toward consumer credit, the power of financial institutions, and role of the banking system in changing American society. Manning's analysis of America's growing dependence on consumer credit, the powerful financial institutions that have emerged under the deregulation era and shaped the fragile underpinnings of the "American Dream," are presented in the context of broad social, economic, and cultural perspectives as US society grapples with its declining position in the global economy.

Dr. Manning has produced a truly creative approach to analyzing the post-industrial society where there is more profit to be made financing consumption than producing the items themselves. This is an unusual book in its effective weaving of macro-social and economic trends with carefully selected case-studies of companies and housholds. There is no attempt to present glossy oversimplifications, black-and-white statements, or sweeping generalizations. Rather, the book seeks to demonstrate how globalization and US industrial restructuring have dramatically changed the opportunities for the American middle-class based on their earned income (remember the primacy of the one-income earning family in the 1960s!) AND the pressures of the federal government to aid the suffering banking industry through favorable deregulatory policies which indirectly contributed to the soaring federal deficit. Manning emphasizes that there is no single institution or social trend that is responsible for this phenomenon as he artfully explains how all sectors of American society have become integrally dependent on borrowing--the "Triangle of Debt."

This book is an impressive intellectual achievement: in a dispassionate manner it marshals overwhelming evidence and complex conceptual models that reveal the predatory policy banking institutions and marketing tools that have addicted most people to easy credit in America--both young and old. Furthermore, this book was the precursor to foresightful academic predictions of the subprime mortgage crisis and I understand that his next book systematically examines the consequences of the Credit Card Nation as the country's Baby Boomers enter into an underfunded quagmire of retirement. Aside from the momentous intellectual contributions of the book, Dr Manning is one of the rare breed of scholars that practices what he preaches in the classroom through Congressional testimony, trenchant policy analyses, frequent media commentary, and his own carefully designed alternative to consumer bankruptcy.

One nation, under debt, with liberty and justice for some
We're in the middle of an ongoing social and economic crisis according to Robert D. Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation". And with supporting evidence like his figures of every credit cardholder having 10 cards in their name and every family revolving over $4,000 in debt (the number now is over $7,000), it's easy to see why he feels like it is a crisis. In this fascinating book, Manning describes the situation thoroughly, shows who's at fault, and what we should expect as a result of the situation.

Manning separates the country into two categories of credit card users, the convenience sector, who pay their debt off monthly, and the revolver sector, who have accumulated all the personal debt this country maintains. He focuses on the revolvers and the dire straits they're in due to the interest they pay on their debt. The author does mention some bright spots in the history of debt (e.g. 'The Blair Witch Project', which was financed on credit cards and ended up making millions), but the overall picture portrayed is bleak and Manning doesn't describe how everyday people can take advantage of the credit card economy.

One major liability in this book (no pun intended) is that Manning repeatedly blames the credit card industry for putting so much effort into their marketing. It's true that the industry uses some sneaky techniques to get people to become lifelong subscription holders to their finance charges, but some of the industry's marketing can be used for consumer benefit.

Manning has a great angle on the social aspects of our spending society (from a Puritan savings mentality to a commercial spending mentality) and how it affects the separate classes (the system negatively affects the people who need it most while helping the people who need it least). His philosophy on the drawbacks of a culture that punishes production but rewards consumption should also be transferred to taxes as well as credit.

All in all, this is a thoroughly insightful book, which everyone should read.

JSBM
Author, How to Take Advantage of the People Who Are Trying to Take Advantage of You: 50 Ways to Capitalize on the System