(Photo: Rambis, Flickr.com)

Call them what you will — tightwads, cheapskates, penny pinchers — they’re hot again. Back when more was more, and the Dow was dizzying, skinflints were as endangered as the expense account is today. Now, in an economy where excess is the new tacky, frugal fannies everywhere are having their day.

Neal Templin is a tightwad. Just ask him. He chronicles all the ways he doesn’t part with his money — and all the lessons he’s learned in the process — in a Wall Street Journal column called, appropriately, Cheapskate.

This hour, On Point: Impervious to the impulse buy — and not picking up the check. Confessions of a skinflint.

You can join the conversation. Are you a proud cheapskate? What about the flipside — when is spending the better choice? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Tom Ashbrook is on vacation this week.

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Neal Templin, personal finance editor of The Wall Street Journal. He writes the Journal’s weekly Cheapskate column.

From Essex County, N.J., is Clarissa Templin, Neal Templin’s wife, the long-suffering spouse of a cheapskate.

And from Philadelphia, we’re joined by Scott Rick, a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He’s co-author of the paper “Tightwads and Spendthrifts,” examining the emotional and neural underpinnings of spending money.  See also, “Are You a Tightwad or a Spendthrift? And What Does This Mean for Retailers?,” an article from Wharton School Publishing on Rick’s work, and the spendthrift-tightwad scale he developed with colleagues to measure “individual differences in the pain of paying.”

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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