At the heart of the current economic crisis is the story of debt — of debts gone bad, of debts not repaid, and debts that should never have been agreed to in the first place. We spend more than we have, and if we don’t pay it back, the system fails.

It’s always been so — according to novelist and essayist Margaret Atwood, whose new book presents debt as one of humankind’s most powerful metaphors.

“Debt is like air,” she writes, “something we take for granted until things go wrong.” And then what?

This hour, On Point: “Payback” — Margaret Atwood’s timely consideration of “debt and the shadow side of wealth.”

You can join the conversation. What does debt mean to you? Is it a natural part of our condition? When did it become okay to be in debt…and what happens when we can’t pay it back?

-Anthony Brooks, guest host

Guest:

Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood has published more than forty books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Alias Grace,” and “The Blind Assassin.” Her newest book, from her upcoming CBC Massey Lecture series, is “Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.”

Read an excerpt from “Payback” at the Times Online.

(AP Photo)

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Easy consumer credit is nothing new, but Americans are turning to their credit cards as never before — and racking up debt at unprecedented rates.

Never before, we’re told, have so many Americans owed so much at such high interest rates. And with mortgage troubles deepening, and the economy struggling, some fear personal debt could be the next shoe to drop.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee voted to move forward with a bill that would rein in the American credit card industry, but consumer advocates say Washington isn’t going far enough to tame an unruly credit-card industry. What can consumers, lenders, and the government do to avert a crisis?

This hour, On Point: You’re pre-approved! Credit cards, consumers, and a nation in debt.

You can join the conversation. Are you in debt on your credit cards yourself? If so, have you been splurging, or are you using your credit cards just to survive?

-Jane Clayson, guest host

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Guests:

Joining us from Cambridge, Mass., is Elizabeth Warren. She’s the Leo Gottlieb professor of law at Harvard Law School, and an expert on credit card debt and bankruptcy. She’s written several books, most recently “All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan” which she co-authored with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi.

Joining us from Portland, Oregon, is J.D. Roth. He’s the man behind the well-known personal finance blog “Get Rich Slowly.” The blog started out as a chronicle of how he himself overcame $35,000 of personal debt, including about $20,000 in credit card debt.

(AP)

It’s a battle zone out there in the US economy. Lines at the door of American banks, in photos that look out of the 1930s. Home foreclosures still surging. The federal government stepping in big to try and brace up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fears of worse to come.

This isn’t the picture economist Martin Feldstein had in mind when he began advising Ronald Reagan on tax cuts, deregulation, and supply side economics in the 1980s. But it’s what we’ve got.

This hour, On Point: Heavyweight Harvard economist Martin Feldstein on the fix we’re in, and what comes next for the US economy.

- Tom Ashbrook

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Guests:

Martin Feldstein, economics professor at Harvard University, is president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan.

Logos of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

There is giant news in the world of finance, your mortgage and your taxes today. The federal government is moving to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the huge and last week shaky backers of nearly half of all American mortgage debt, five trillion in debt.

Afraid they could come tumbling down, the US Treasury Department and Federal Reserve stepped in last night with a call for federal billions to keep them running.

America’s rolling financial crisis just entered a hair-raising new chapter. So, what are we learning?

This hour On Point: in the cauldron of crisis, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

- Tom Ashbrook

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Guests:

James Hagerty, reporter for the Wall Street Journal

Roben Farzad, columnist and senior writer for BusinessWeek

Paul Willen, senior economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Robert Samuelson, columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post.

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Warren Bennis has made a big name for himself over the years as a business management guru. He’s been an advisor to Fortune 500 companies and to presidents. Along the way, he’s thought a lot about leadership — what makes a great CEO, general, president.

Lately he’s decided that it all comes down to judgment. Courage, vision, experience are all fine, but in the end, good judgment is what makes the difference.

As we elect a new president, will we choose judgment over experience? And how do we know the difference?

This hour, On Point: Business guru Warren Bennis on leadership.

-James Hattori

Guests:

Warren Bennis, distinguished professor of business administration at the University of Southern California and author of the new book, “Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls.”

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Tom Perkins, and the legendary venture capital firm he co-founded, has been a driving force in Silicon Valley for over thirty-five years. Netscape, Amazon, Google — some would say his firm built the Valley as we know it today.

When Al Gore wanted to help spark a green technology revolution, he joined up with Perkins’ and company.

Now, with Wall Street wobbling and the economy uncertain, Perkins still has confidence in America’s tech sector, and he’s here to tell us why.

This hour, On Point: inside Silicon Valley, and the tech economy, with Tom Perkins.

-Tom Perkins

Guest:

Tom Perkins, co-founder of the leading venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, which has backed companies such as Netscape, Amazon, and Google. He is out with a new memoir called, “Valley Boy: The Education of Tom Perkins.”

Former Wall Street hotshot, now Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson is orchestrating a big banks “mega-fund” to help mop up the subprime mortgage mess — and try to get some of that bad debt off the books and avoid a deeper credit crunch that could still stove in the U.S. economy.

The stakes are high, but still critics are crying foul. Wall Street titans made vast fortunes playing fast and loose in the run-up, they say. So should Washington be saving their bacon now, when ordinary Americans at the other end of the meltdown are losing their homes?

This hour, On Point: Main Street, millionaires, and moral hazard in the subprime mess.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

David Henry, senior writer at Business Week.

Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and co-founder of Macro Markets, a specialty investment bank that trades in real estate markets.

Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine.

Roger Ehrenberg, former Wall Street banker, financial blogger at Informationarbitrage.com and president of Monitor 110, a financial intelligence firm.

Back in the day, American business schools had a tough time fighting their way onto American university campuses. Academics didn’t see what they taught as a serious profession worthy of a spot.

B-schools made their case, arguing they had a science of management and the nation’s greater good at heart. And a million M.B.A.s were born.

Now, a top B-school professor is arguing that business schools have failed in their promise; that they are turning out hedge fund hotshots who don’t build companies but tear them down.

This hour, On Point: B-school backlash, and what’s going into America’s M.B.A.s.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Rakesh Khurana, associate professor in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School and author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession.”

Edward Roberts, professor of at MIT’s Sloan School of Business and founder and chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

Well, nobody’s talking about the almighty dollar anymore. Driven by American debt and deficits, the once-mighty US greenback is now at parity with the once-laughable Canadian dollar for the first time in three decades. It’s a pipsqueak next to the Euro.

If the fall is good or bad, it depends on where you stand, and how far the dollar sinks. American travelers abroad are already the new first-world paupers. European visitors here feel rich. Warren Buffet has made a bundle betting against the greenback.

This hour, On Point: the incredible shrinking dollar, and what it’s telling us about the USA and the world.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Peter Coy, economics editor for Business Week.

Catherine Mann, professor of economics at Brandeis University and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Roger G. Ibbotson, finance professor at the Yale School of Management.

James Mallon, Canadian expat living in the U.S..

Catherine Butterworth, American expat living in Greece.

In overall earning power, American women still lag behind American men. But among the young and urban, in some of the country’s hottest cities — New York, Chicago, Boston, Minneapolis — young women are actually outstripping young men in take-home pay; some by a wide margin.

It’s those young women who have the cash, the nice place, the hot prospects. And bravo for them. But what about dating the guys they’re leaving behind? Tricky, they say. Young women are now talking about “dating down.”

This hour, On Point: the meeting of the sexes when the woman makes the bucks.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Alex Williams, style writer for The New York Times.

Dalton Conley, chair of the sociology department at New York University.

Marisa, 29, a single corporate lawyer in Manhattan.

Ifey, 31, partner in a New York law firm.