#107: The Roaring Twenties And The Birth Of Consumer Credit – Martha Olney
2 min read
Martha Olney is an economist and Teaching Professor in Berkeley’s Economics Department.
Show notes
Selected links
- Follow Martha: Website | Twitter
- Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s, by Martha Olney
- Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression, by Peter Temin
- Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920 – 1940, by Roland Marchand
- Traitor to his Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H. W. Brands
- ‘The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis’, paper by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi
Topics discussed
- How did Martha become interested in the history of consumer credit? 3:28
- The birth of consumer credit. 6:54
- How consumer credit companies and advertisers midwifed a change in cultural attitudes regarding borrowing. 16:41
- What is the relationship between the increase in inequality and the rise in consumer credit during the 1920s? 31:34
- Political elites in the Great Depression versus the Great Recession. 47:35
- How did studying the 1920s prepare Martha for the Great Recession? 54:58
- If private debt is capitalism’s Achilles Heel, what should we do about it? 57:54
Advertisements discussed (plus two bonus ads)
