Description
Book Synopsis The current literature on consumerism is diverse, scattered, and unsystematic. This book remedies this by identifying the beginning of mass consumer society in the United States, starting with the New Deal. The New Deal framework of guaranteeing new home purchases by means of low down-payment, fixed-rate home mortgages lasted until the 1970s, at which time the legal framework unraveled due to a sustained attack on New Deal racism. Despite this, American consumerism continued and even flourished without a regulatory structure. This book analyzes seven key pieces of federal legislation which undergird American consumer society to this day.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One—The Regulatory Society
- 1. Democrats and Republicans Before 1932
- 2. Glass-Steagall as Foundational Legislation
- 3. Joe T. Robinson's Home Owners' Loan Act
- 4. The 1934 Housing Act and "Redlining"
- 5. Wagner-Steagall and Public Housing
- 6. Steagall-Wagner and the Creation of "Fannie Mae"
- 7. The 1945 Amended GI Bill and American Racism
- 8. African American Exodus and the 1949 Housing Act
- 9. Explosion! Levittowns and Shopping Malls
- Part Two—The Deregulated Society
- 10. The White Working Class and the "Treaty of Detroit"
- 11. Brown, Civil Rights and the End of the New Deal
- 12. The 1970s: New Republicans and Old Democrats
- 13. Depository Institutions and the Flowering of Bain Capital
- 14. The Privatized Mortgage Industry of the 2000s
- 15. From Brooksley Born to Sarbanes-Oxley
- 16. Dodd-Frank and Legislative Approval of Consumer Society
- Conclusions: The Consumer Paradise
- Chapter Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
