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Infinite debt:

How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy

By Thomas Geoghegan

As I walk through the Loop in Chicago, I wonder how many people I pass are caught up in lawsuits. In a Whitman mood, I try to guess from each face who’s being hauled into court to pay off a debt. According to a front-page story in the Chicago Tribune last June, the number of collection cases before the circuit court of Cook County came to over 130,000. That’s double the number of cases in 2000, and well before the meltdown: obviously the number is even higher now. At the Daley Center, across the street from my office, I can watch hundreds of these cases go to judgment in half an hour: in go the debtors, out go the lawyers to garnish people’s wages. And then there are the home foreclosures, some 44,000 of them in 2008. The number of collection and foreclosure cases in this one county—174,000—is equal to the total number of people in three entire Chicago wards: every man, woman, and child. I stress “child” in particular, since the banks give out credit cards like candy.

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SEE ALSO: Banks and banking; Consumer credit; Debt; Financial services industry; Interest; Interest rates; Labor movement; Manufacturing industries; Usury

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