Ode to What’s Owed

In Hamlet, Shakespeare gives to one of the play’s less exciting characters, whom he is about to kill off anyway, one of the most quoted passages in the entire drama. It is spoken by Polonius, as a father, giving advice to his son, Laertes, as the son is about to depart for school in another country, and it includes these lines:

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”

“Husbandry” here is another word for “thrift.” The idea is that, when you can easily get credit, you’re not likely to be careful with your money. This advice, however, hardly seems to be in keeping with modern economic theory, or indeed with actual practice in our society, wherein earning, saving, and spending are all seen as parts of a vast pattern stemming from the whole process of the management of wealth. Any parent today giving such advice to his or her offspring, unless it is associated with some religious doctrine, would be seen as very far behind the times.

But, where religion is concerned, the Old Testament is definitely on the side of paying what you owe. Immediately following the Ten Commandments, there is a section which apparently sanctions the lending of money, but is somewhat hazy about the charging of interest. It seems to say that interest is OK, but only from outsiders, not from fellow members of the “Chosen People.” The New Testament is much more ambiguous, and has Jesus himself teaching people (as the “Lord’s Prayer” is usually translated) to ask God to “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

I was very much aware of this dichotomy when I wrote the following, about a new kind of court which our economy had produced.

Court of Last Resort

A new Federal building opened not long ago in Santa Barbara, the town where I live. It is large and (by my standards, at least) palatial. Another California city I visited recently had a similarly new and magnificent structure, built for the same specific purpose. For all I know, these grand edifices are going up all over the country. What are they? Bankruptcy Courts!

Pardon me for being surprised, but I always thought bankruptcy was a rather shameful thing that happened only to people who got into debts which they couldn’t pay. Since our whole economy is based on credit, i.e. trusting or believing people when they make solemn promises to pay what they owe, I would have expected social pressure to make bankruptcies relatively rare, and all their proceedings to be hidden away in the darkest and most dismal corners of our judiciary. Instead, we find the whole thing being flaunted, popularized, and made virtually respectable.

What is happening here? There was a time (not so long ago historically) when people were put in jail for owing money. Now we not only don’t punish them, but we make it easier and easier for them to slide out of their old debts, and start getting into new ones.

Am I displaying some kind of bias or ignorance? No doubt you want to tell me that the big waste in government construction projects is not in bankruptcy courts but in our massive new gulag of prisons. You would of course be right. But the courts tend to be much more centrally located – and, unlike the prisons, they are freely open to the public. That, in fact, as far as our local specimen is concerned, is, to me, its only redeeming feature. Santa Barbara, you see, is lamentably lacking in public restroom facilities, and our new Federal Bankruptcy Court building has some splendid ones.

There’s only one hitch: Every time you enter the building, even if it’s just to use the restroom, you, and everything on you, have to pass through a physical inspection so rigorous that you might as well be boarding a jet for Jerusalem. The purpose, I’m sure, is not simply to discourage all but the most pressing lavatory visitations – but it does tend to have that effect, at least on me. Once past all the guards and metal detectors however, you can enjoy what must surely be not only one of the most elegant taxpayer-funded restrooms in town, but also one of the safest. This of course presupposes that you don’t mind the questionable company of bankrupts and lawyers – perhaps even (horrible thought!) of bankrupt lawyers.