Manufacturing Debt: A History of the Bank Credit Card Infrastructure

This dissertation provides a history of the bank credit card infrastructure in the United States from 1952 to 2007 and outlines the bank management strategies, tactics, and philosophies that helped to transform the bank credit card into a tool for survival. The dissertation traces the commercial bank management strategies, tactics, and philosophies that guided the development of the bank credit card ‘infrastructure’ and were integral to the manufacturing of debt and a financial system that enabled the widespread distribution of precarious debt. The dissertation argues that the infrastructure that makes up the credit card is simultaneously, one, the technical creation of a payment platform; two, the creation of new ways of managing and planning in banking; and three, represents explicit efforts to alter the legal, social and economic conditions that banks and payment companies operated in. It examines how postwar military inspired corporate strategies guided the design, construction, and growth of the bank credit card associations responsible for the growth and development of the bank credit card ‘infrastructure.’ The dissertation claims that beginning in the mid-1960s, American commercial bankers utilized an ‘environmentality’ approach to management, that is, they used a variety of governance techniques and strategies to understand and deliberately attempt to alter their external environment, or those external elements not under the direct control or ownership of the bank, to ensure the bank credit card’s long-term survival and growth. This systematic or environmental approach to understanding a bank’s milieu provoked bank officers into taking pre-emptive measures to avoid, eliminate, or capitalize on the risks associated with these external variables. By detailing these banking strategies, pre-emptive actions, and their effects, the dissertation claims that the 2007-2008 global financial and economic crisis was not a mistake but rather a consequence of the manufacturing of debt.Ph.D