In this presentation I will discuss the expansion of credit use and rising levels of indebtedness in relation to questions of inequality and social mobility. Inequality began to increase in the US starting in the early 1980s. Social mobility, on the other hand, displayed stickiness at the ends—while a majority of Americans have exceeded their parents’ incomes, the extent of that increase was not necessarily sufficient to move them to a different rung of the family income ladder. Access to credit has begun to matter a great deal in this context. The presentation will begin with a discussion on the moral economy of credit and debt—the ways in which lending and borrowing practices remained subject to moral appraisal in capitalist economies, particularly in the US. We will then discuss the role credit and debt play in contemporary politics of inequality and social mobility.