After a long period of prosperity and steady economic growth, the world's leading economies are now in crisis, although that there will be debate about its origins, the scale and seriousness of the crisis is not in doubt. There is also no doubt that excessive amounts of consumer credit, allied to a weak understanding of how globalized credit markets might react to a crisis, have played a significant part. This book, which is primarily about credit, debt, and the trouble they have led to, is written by authors who have specialized in researching into over-indebtedness — that is, situations in which an individual's debt burden has become overwhelming. For these authors, the plight of individuals is a primary concern, but the wider issue is how credit is used and how it changes societies. The essays in this volume — addressing topics which are fundamental to our understanding of the current crisis — range widely across the whole sector of consumer finance, including mortgages, predatory and unsecured lending, 'credit-binges,' the regulation of consumer lending, bankruptcy, insolvency, repayment plans, debt counseling, and much more. The contributors take a comparative approach, dealing with the US, the UK, Europe, South Africa, Korea, and Japan. The conclusions drawn from the book are equally wide-ranging, but above all, the lesson learned is that the financialization of contemporary life ensures that issues of the appropriate role of credit remains of critical importance in society.
Author(s): Johanna Niemi, Iain Ramsay, William C. Whitford
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 453
Prelims......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
List of Contributors......Page 8
Introduction......Page 10
1 Inequality and Access to Financial Services......Page 20
2 The Political Economy of Consumer Credit Securitization: Comparing Predatory Lending in Home Finance in the US, UK, Germany and Japan......Page 40
3 Consumer Overindebtedness in Brazil and the Need for New Consumer Bankruptcy Legislation......Page 64
4 ‘Wannabe WAGS’ and ‘Credit Binges’: The Construction of Overindebtedness in the UK......Page 84
5 Overindebted Households and Law: Prevention and Rehabilitation in Europe......Page 100
6 ‘A Call to Arms’—For Regulation of Consumer Lending......Page 114
7 The Political Economy of the EC Consumer Credit Directive......Page 138
8 Disclosure as an Imperfect Means for Addressing Overindebtedness: An Empirical Assessment of Comparative Approaches......Page 162
9 Prevention of Overindebtedness and Mechanisms for Resolving Overindebtedness of South African Consumers......Page 184
10 The Myth of the Cautious Consumer: Law, Culture, Economics and Politicsin the Rise and Partial Fall of Unsecured Lending in Japan......Page 208
11 Making Sense of Nation-Level Bankruptcy Filing Rates......Page 234
12 Overindebtedness and Financial Stress: A Comparative Study in Europe......Page 258
13 Bankruptcy in Germany: Filing Rates and the People behind the Numbers......Page 282
14 Elderly Consumer Weakness in ‘Withholding Credit’......Page 298
15 Two Decades, Three Key Questions, and Evolving Answers in European Consumer Insolvency Law: Responsibility, Discretion, and Sacrifice......Page 316
16 A Law-in-Action Approach to Comparative Study of Repayment Forms of Consumer Bankruptcy......Page 340
17 Debt Agreements Down Under......Page 364
18 Personal Bankruptcy in Korea......Page 384
19 New Labour: More Debt— The Political Response......Page 402
20 Debt Counselling in the Shadow of the Court: The Dutch Experience......Page 428
Index......Page 450
