Debt

The terminology of debt

A voluntary loan agreement may be presumed to confer benefits upon both borrower and lender, and to have no effect upon other parties. The terms of the agreement may be expected to take account of "social time preference", which is an observed tendency to attach greater value to current enjoyment than to deferred enjoyment. That behavioural characteristic confers a benefit on the borrower at the expense of the lender, in return for which the borrower may be expected to compensate the lender by the payment of "interest". The agreement may also be expected to take account of the possibility that the borrower may "default" upon its terms by failing fulfil its obligations concerning the payment of interest or the return of the original payment (termed the "principal"). The agreement may include the provision of "collateral", which gives the lender title to an asset belonging to the lender, if the borrower defaults (the term "mortgage" may be used if the asset is property). Alternatively, or in addition to the provision of collateral, the agreed interest rate may embody a "risk premium" in addition to the appropriate "risk-free interest rate".

Attitudes to debt

Since a loan agreement so defined confers benefits and does no harm, it is not obvious that it should be an object of disapproval; and there is no obvious reason for objecting to the charging of interest, unless the exercise of social time preference is deemed objectionable. It has nevertheless been widely condemned at several stages in the course of history. The divine instructions received by Moses, as recorded in the Bible, include:

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.

- which have, from time to time, been interpreted by western religious authorities as forbidding all charging of interest. There has been much debate concerning the interpretation of the term "usury", and as late as the 1920s, the then popular Catholic author, Hillaire Belloc, wrote that:

It means any interest, however low, demanded for an unproductive loan. It is not only immoral [on which account it has been condemned by every moral code - Pagan, Mohommedan, Catholic] but it is ultimately destructive of society.

Secular objections to debt have been expressed by Shakespeare in Polonius's advice to his son:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

- and by Benjamin Franklin:

But, ah, think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him, you will make poor pitiful sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose you veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for, as Poor Richard says, the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt.

Those objections and misgivings appear to have little influence on 21st century behaviour to judge by the unprecedented levels of household debt that have been recorded, but the terms "mortgage", "finance" and "hire-purchase" tend to be used rather than "debt", and Islamic banks provide their customers with arrangements for deferring the payment for purchases that do not involve the payment of interest.