City of Debtors: A Century of Fringe Finance

by Anne Fleming

Since the rise of the small-sum lending industry in the 1890s, people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in the United States have been asked to pay the greatest price for credit. Again and again, Americans have asked why the most fragile borrowers face the highest costs for access to the smallest loans. To protect low-wage workers in need of credit, reformers have repeatedly turned to law, only to face the vexing question of where to draw the line between necessary protection and overreaching paternalism.

City of Debtors shows how each generation of Americans has tackled the problem of fringe finance, using law to redefine the meaning of justice within capitalism for those on the economic margins. Anne Fleming tells the story of the small-sum lending industry’s growth and regulation from the ground up, following the people who navigated the market for small loans and those who shaped its development at the state and local level. Fleming’s focus on the city and state of New York, which served as incubators for numerous lending reforms that later spread throughout the nation, differentiates her approach from work that has centered on federal regulation. It also reveals the overlooked challenges of governing a modern financial industry within a federalist framework.

Fleming’s detailed work contributes to the broader and ongoing debate about the meaning of justice within capitalistic societies, by exploring the fault line in the landscape of capitalism where poverty, the welfare state, and consumer credit converge.

Genres: Nonfiction

376 pages, Hardcover

Published January 8, 2018

About the author

Anne Fleming is the author of five books: Pool-Hopping and Other Stories , shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Danuta Gleed Award and the Governor General’s Award; the critically acclaimed novel, Anomaly ; Gay Dwarves of America , also shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson; poemw , a book of poems shortlisted for the BC Book Prizes’ Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; and The Goat , a novel for children. Her non-fiction has been published in a raft of anthologies, including Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, Great Expectations: Twenty-Four True Stories About Childbirth, and You Be Me .

Anne grew up in Toronto and lived in Kitchener, Ontario for a chunk of time before moving to Vancouver, where she received her MFA from UBC. Her fiction has won National Magazine Awards, been commissioned by CBC Radio, and widely published in magazines and anthologies.

A highly regarded teacher of creative writing, she has been on faculty at both UBC campuses, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She now divides her time between Vancouver (unceded Coast Salish territory) and Kelowna (unceded Syilx territory), where she teaches at UBC’s Okanagan Campus. She likes to cross-country ski and play the ukulele, although not necessarily at the same time.​​​

Reviews

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to write up a formal review of this elsewhere, but suffice it to say that I really liked this history. It's interesting and important. It follows the cat and mouse game or whack a mole of regulations protecting the public versus small borrowers and then the arbitrage of lenders as they play state law and federal law against each other. It also highlights when reforms worked--for example when Persia Campell (what an awesome name) teamed up with a group of activists in Harlem to change the law in New York. And the Russell Sage foundation and the small lenders cleaning up the industry. There are lessons for future reformers in here as well--you need some buy in from responsible industry insiders. With the CFPB, I would have hoped we were getting somewhere, but it looks like we may be back to the whack a mole game of states versus internet lenders.

[Llewellyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another example of academic research that doesn't translate to a good book. Tons of research here but it just seems like a document dump. No real narrative to make it compelling. Just sort of like, "some people took out these loans, some people took out these other loans." Couldn't finish.

I was hoping it would get into the why of fringe debt. What happens in debt traps, etc...

I feel like the author has the info, but just maybe needs to be rewritten.

[Vijay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history for those interested in the evolution and regulation of fringe finance. The local histories on this subject (e.g, family properties) tend to better than the broad surveys