“Buying on time”

Abstract

Consumer credit has been central to the history of small loans since the late 19^th century. Debates over credit buying (or “buying on time”) reveal fundamental assumptions about imagined futures and pasts in modern economies. Credit buying often built on expectations of future growth and improved living standards. Still, debates over credit highlight social anxieties also invoked an imagined past of supposedly more frugal household financing. Taking the German debate as a vantage point, the article deconstructs both the myth of a prewar past built on cash buying and contemporary fears of an “Americanized” future of debt-based spending. It explores transatlantic differences in the temporal perception of consumer credit. The final section examines shifts in consumer lending since the 1970s.