Judging a book by the dates in its subtitle

Used book store. Economics shelf. Something catches my eye.

Title: Debtors and Creditors in America

Bored yet? I'm not.

Subtitle: Insolvency, Imprisonment for Debt, and Bankruptcy, 1607-1900

I saw those dates and my heart skipped a beat. I had to have this book.

Author: Peter J. Coleman
Publisher: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin
Madison, 1974

Now you're definitely bored. But check out the first two sentences of the Preface:

The cost of money is higher as this is being written than at almost any time in living memory. It presses us so hard because we depend more heavily upon credit than any society that man has ever known.

Yep. A given rate of interest would press less hard if we depended less on credit. The cost of money depends not only upon the rate of interest, but also on the reliance on credit. Coleman has it exactly right.

Everyone knows interest rates vary. Few are aware that our dependence on credit also varies. In the mid-1970s -- when Peter Coleman wrote "we depend more heavily upon credit than any society that man has ever known" -- our dependence on credit was less than ten-to-one. Before it broke our economy, it reached 35-to-one:

M1 money is the stuff that comes to you in your paycheck. "Credit in use" is debt.