Martha Olney is an economist and Teaching Professor in Berkeley's Economics Department.

Show notes

Selected links

• Follow Martha: Website | Twitter
• Buy Now, Pay Later: Advertising, Credit, and Consumer Durables in the 1920s, by Martha Olney
• Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression, by Peter Temin
• Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920 – 1940, by Roland Marchand
• Traitor to his Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by H. W. Brands
• 'The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis', paper by Atif Mian and Amir Sufi

Topics discussed

• How did Martha become interested in the history of consumer credit? 3:28
• The birth of consumer credit. 6:54
• How consumer credit companies and advertisers midwifed a change in cultural attitudes regarding borrowing. 16:41
• What is the relationship between the increase in inequality and the rise in consumer credit during the 1920s? 31:34
• Political elites in the Great Depression versus the Great Recession. 47:35
• How did studying the 1920s prepare Martha for the Great Recession? 54:58
• If private debt is capitalism's Achilles Heel, what should we do about it? 57:54