Credit of two sorts

#9/22/11 In his work "Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One" Benjamin Franklin discusses the idea of credit from two distinct perspectives. On the one hand, Franklin addresses credit in a traditional sense, as a means by which a man can accumulate money. He says "Remember that CREDIT is Money." And he surmises that when a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it, they can accumulate a considerable sum of cash. Credit is a fairly new concept during this period, but Franklin makes the point that when you loan out money, and charge interest for late payments, you can make quite a nice sum, and on the flip side, if you can use credit to beget more money, then your credit can pay for itself, and then some. But, more importantly from a philosophical perspective I believe, Franklin talks about credit from the point of view of personal credit. Franklin seems to claim that, while the actual borrowing and lending of credit are important parts of a young tradesman's financial repertoire, what is most important about credit is that having good financial credit and having good credit as a man are inextricably linked. As such, Franklin is advising his young friend to show as much care when dealing with his own reputation as he would when dealing with his actual line of credit. He writes, "The most trifling actions that affect a Man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning or nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer. But if he sees you at a Billiard table or hears your voice in a tavern when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day." This is very sound advice on Franklin's part, and it indicates a facet of finance that is noticeably absent from today's society. Today, ANYONE can get a basically limitless line of credit from a small time bank or lender, and can spend far outside their means without any immediate consequence. Of course, they can start paying off credit cards with other cards, and accumulating debt, and then end up going bankrupt, but I feel like in Franklin's day, such an occurrence was far less common. I believe we are sorely lacking the sort of interpersonal relationships that Franklin cites in his discussion of credit. No banker is going to come around and see if you're a hard worker or if you're a shmuck before lending to you these days, but if they did, I think we'd have a much healthier financial system, where people are held accountable, hard work is rewarded, and laziness and foolishness are cut down at the source.