Author Scott Nelson discussed his book, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters, in which he argues that consumer debt has underpinned almost every major financial panic in the nation’s history. In each case, the chain of banks, brokers, moneylenders, and insurance companies that separated borrowers and lenders made it impossible to distinguish good loans from bad. Bound up in this history are stories of national banks funded by smugglers, fistfights in Congress over the gold standard, America’s early dependence on British bankers, and how presidential campaigns were forged in controversies over private debt.