>btw. has anyone written a history of
>consumer credit from say, 1900 or 1920 to today?
Haven't read this, only heard about it: Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit, by Lendol G. Calder (Princeton Univ Pr, 1999).
A search for "consumer credit" on Amazon.com turns up mostly books about how to get out of debt, how to erase a bad credit history, and bankruptcy...
Doug