Jack Cashill. Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit & Debit, from Aristotle to AIG. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 259 pages.
With many of our current economic problems blamed on over-leveraging (both nationally and right here in Las Vegas), it’s a good idea to get a sense of how credit and debt have historically developed. In POPES AND BANKERS, Jack Cashill does just that, explaining how, every step of the way, there have been those who have opposed borrowing and lending.
Cashill weaves together philosophical, religious, and cultural discourses on credit, pulling together a variety of sources to take us from Biblical prohibitions against usury to current anger against sub-prime lenders. Cashill makes his sympathies clear right off; instead of focusing our wrath on “predatory lenders,” he suggested we might find the roots of our current economic crisis by looking at “predatory borrowers,” a group for whom Cashill revives the Aristotilean term “prodigal.” He does a good job of pulling in ideas about debt from various sources, including the writings of Aquinas, Dante, and Bentham (to name a random few) to show how our ideas of credit and debit have changed over the years.
From the time of Martin Luther to at least that of Henry Ford, many of those who rage against “usury” have been avowedly anti-Semitic. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice figures heavily in Cashill’s discussion of this strand of anti-usury, but he demonstrates that the Bard was merely scratching the surface. As he moves closer to present-day America, Cashill is able to shift his discussion from morality to politics. His interpretation of the New Deal is likely at odds with that in your college textbook. Within the past decade, he traces how political interference in the mortgage process, from the Community Reinvestment Act (1977) to the American Dream Downpayment Act (2003) led lenders to make loans they probably shouldn’t have. The result was the current housing bust.
All in all, this is a thought-provoking book that pulls from many diverse sources; if nothing else, after reading it you’ll be able to browse the business section with a little more perspective than yesterday’s closing Dow, and it might force you to think a little more closely about your own borrowing habits.