Credit is an abstract concept that is difficult to understand.  Like the multi-dimensional reality we live in, we can only truly grasp those dimensions that we can actually see and feel.  Credit, like the fifth dimension, is always going to be an abstraction that remains elusive.  We may get the general idea, but the actual reality and all its implications are always going to challenge our perception.  It is upon credit, however, that the development of civilization has depended.

Without credit everything shrinks: wealth, material well-being, education, health, security, and most all other opportunities.  Access to funds that can be invested now, but paid back over time is a key factor in increasing living standards around the world.  Modern society itself could not exist without a cushion of credit – a colossal air mattress keeping us above the cold, hard ground of a more brutal existence.  It’s pumped up by confidence and our hope in the future.  The trick has always been to keep a reasonable amount of air in the mattress appropriately correlated to the actual physical economy.

Since we all depend on the integrity of our collective system of credit, we all have an interest in how it’s managed.  This means ensuring that those who get paid to pump air in don’t simply inflate for their own profits and burst the mattress.  This also means that in correcting for over inflation too much air doesn’t get sucked out too quickly bringing us crashing back down to earth.  We aren’t literally sleeping together, but we do share a bed of sorts; and it’s made of credit.  Even if we sometimes resent our bedmates, especially those that trash the mattress, we always have to remember the importance of the bed.