Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. Saints and Sinners
Chapter 2. Embracing Shylock
Chapter 3. Protestants, War, and Capitalism
Chapter 4. The Great Experiment
Chapter 5. The New Debt Revolution
Chapter 6. Something Old, Something New
Chapter 7. Islam, Interest, and Microlending
Chapter 8. The Consumer Debt Revolution

Appendix. Early Interest Rate Tables and Calculations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Charles R. Geisst is Ambassador Charles A. Gargano Professor of Finance at Manhattan College and the author of many other books, including Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America and Wall Street: A History.

Reviews

"Beggar Thy Neighbor starts with Marcus Junius Brutus, a predatory lender infamous for his role in the assassination of Julius Caesar, ends with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and provides a lively social-cum-cultural history of debt for the intervening two millennia."—Journal of Economic History

"A compelling book not only for history buffs but also for financial market participants who will find that events today have a long history leading up to our current travails."—Henry Kaufman, author of On Money and Markets: A Wall Street Memoir

"A useful introduction to the Christian and Muslim disdain for usury and raises important questions about the prevalence of debt in our economy. Geisst proves that legal, moral, and economic debates over usury and debt are here to stay."—The Historian

"Charles R. Geisst takes us on a splendid tour of the law of usury from ancient times to the present. Along the way one encounters Cicero, Charlemagne, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Michael Milken and many others in this engaging yet critical account of what may well be the oldest and most ubiquitous form of economic regulation. Highly recommended both for the lay reader interested in economic affairs and the academic specialist in money and banking."—Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers University

"Geisst tackles this double-edged, troublesome topic not from a personal level—you won't find 10 tips to reduce personal debt here—but from a historical and practical level. He starts from before banks even existed, with a debate that continues today over interest rate ceilings, and it's evident that we are indebted to religious institutions, both Catholic and Jewish, for the foundational practices of money handling, borrowing, loaning, and repaying."—Publishers Weekly

"An engaging, comprehensive history of the concept of interest and usury."—Robert Wright, Augustana College, South Dakota

"Fascinating and comprehensive. . . . The broad historic sweep that [Geisst] brings to this study impresses."—EH.Net

Prolific author Geist (finance, Manhattan Coll., Wall Street: A History) explores the history of debt from ancient times to the present. He traces society's tortuous course starting with the need for lenders to charge interest that would compensate for risk but that led to exploitation of vulnerable borrowers. The result, he says, has been moral and religious indignation and the imposition of prohibitions against usury. He cites arguments about usury made by such diverse thinkers as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx. He surveys financial innovations such as tontines, annuities, compound interest, bonds, bankruptcy, derivatives, and microfinance, and concludes that the 2008 financial crisis shows that debt-no matter how financially disguised-must be repaid. VERDICT Geist is a fine explainer, but general readers may find the first half of the book (covering pre-1900 debt) a bit arcane. Recommended to students of finance and those strongly interested in the topic. Readers may enjoy Margaret Atwood's Payback (2008) as an excellent complementary work.-Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.