Abstract
In April 2006 a story exploded on the sports pages of newspapers around the world. It was alleged that Wayne Rooney, Manchester United’s footballing star, had built up debts of £700,000 ($1.2 million) from gambling. According to the London Times, the young star (18 years old at the time) had started placing these bets by phone or text message with a bookmaker. He was given unusually large credit and allowed to accrue huge losses. ‘I would think twice about giving someone that much credit, no matter who he was’, one established bookmaker is quoted as saying (The Times, 11 April 2006).
However fruitful have been the mines of Mexico and Peru … there is yet a discovery more precious for humanity, and which has already produced more wealth than that for America; that is the discovery of Credit; a world altogether imaginary, but vast as space, as inexhaustible as the resources of the mind.
M. Gustave de Puynode, quoted in Dunning Macleod (1879)
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© 2006 Ann Pettifor
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Pettifor, A. (2006). Easy Credit: Costly Debts. In: The Coming First World Debt Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236752_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236752_4
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