Maxed Out: Hard Times in the Age of Easy Credit
James Scurlock
In this shocking and illuminating road trip through an America ravaged by debt, award-winning film director James Scurlock examines our multitrillion-dollar addiction to easy credit in all of its absurdities and contradictions. Maxed Out ventures beyond the mind-numbing statistics to expose a financial industry spinning wildly out of control. From the gilded master-planned communities of Northern Las Vegas to the shotgun shacks of the Deep South, the world's largest financial institutions are trolling for customers, hooking the nouveau riche and the poor alike with promises of cheap and easy credit. Maxed Out exposes how Wall Street and Congress spawned the subprime mortgage crisis and reveals how credit card issuers form multimillion-dollar partnerships with universities -- paying them millions for access to their students' personal information, setting kids up for financial ruin before their first job. The industry's final frontier, "debt buying," is a veritable Wild West in which ambitious young men make quick fortunes off the misery and misfortune of others. Hilarious, fascinating, and deeply disturbing, Maxed Out is one man's answer to modern America's most pressing question, "Why can't we get out of debt?"
Award History
1 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ridenhour Book Prize | 2008 | Winner | Secondary source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Northern Las Vegas58%
- Deep South45%
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.
Easy credit enables financial industry practices—shaping subprime lending, targeting consumers (including students via universities), and profiting through debt buying—so Wall Street and Congress help create and worsen consumers’ debt crisis.
Model confidence 46%
04 Reading orientation
35 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 62%.