Andrew Ross (1) (1956–)

The Guardian has been commemorating the tenth anniversary of collapse of Lehman Brothers (a high point of the subprime mortgage crisis) by posting a series of articles about what has (and hasn’t) changed over the past decade, including an article about how a debt-fueled recovery is no recovery at all. A number of sources are predicting the next economic downturn as immanent. A fitting time to read a book about credit.

Ross is a professor at NYU, and sits firmly in the Occupy Wall Street camp. He presents us with a number of striking figures throughout the text. Did you know that there are five active credit cards for every American? Did you know that 96% of students at for-profit colleges take out student loans, when only 35% of them graduate with a degree (which is sometimes unaccredited, and therefore, worthless)? Did you know that 33% of college students pay tuition at least partially with credit card debt?

Back in high school, I recall my friend Rachel learning about college tuition and loans, and proposing that we all go on strike, as the costs were too high. Looking back, I think she might have been onto something.

“Creditocracy” lays bare the fact that our supposed wealth and affluence in the United States is propped up on an extremely precarious mountain of debt. Ross is not pointing the finger at individual profligacy (he is quick to defend an increasingly impoverished populace). Rather, he explores the institutionalized systems of private credit that concentrate wealth at public expense.

What do we do about this? Refuse to repay debts on moral and ethical grounds. Although this may sound unrealistic, debt refusal has a long and storied history, from the biblical Jubilee, to the list of over one hundred sovereign debt crisis over the past five centuries (which you can find on Wikipedia).

Ross has a good bit of on-the-ground experience, which he documents in the book. Rolling Jubilee was founded to forgive defaulted debts, primarily medical debts. Strike Debt has been focused on organizing students with debt from for-profit colleges to refuse repayment.

Due to our taboos around money, we rarely hear each other complaining about our financial debts. Hopefully this book will help to encourage more people to begin engaging in a dialogue with their peers. If you have overly-burdensome financial debts, you’re part of a silent majority! Start mobilizing!

Towards the end of the book, Ross begins exploring climate debts. Places like the US and the UK have arrived at the top of the global economy through extra centuries of fossil-fuel emissions. What if first-world countries forgave the financial debts of third-world countries due to these ecological debts? In an era increasingly defined by financial inequality and climate change, further exploration in this intersection is merited.… (meer)

Fast Boat to China investigates the offshore impact of white collar, high-tech job outsourcing to China. He attempts to dispel myths about Chinese employees propagated by expatriate managers in China who recruit locals to fill these positions. He draws from his interviews of employees in this transitional economy - engineers, professionals, and liberated Shanghainese women, or "xiaojie."

The book speculates on the implications of outsourcing jobs to Shanghai, and further west to Suzhou and Chongqing, not only to the Chinese themselves, but also for Indians and Taiwanese. While Ross does not dispute that outsourcing may help line the pockets for expatriate managers and CEO's of multinational companies, he scrutinizes the job insecurity and identity crises that outsourcing seems to bring to workers in a globalizing China.… (meer)