"Debt is bad" - A refutation

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Bremerhaven, course: Financial Management, language: English, abstract: Throughout all the times since humans started to exchange goods for trade, there has been the common opinion that debt is a bad, sometimes even shameful thing to have. Thus it is not astonishing that in Shakespeares’ Hamlet Lord Polonius advises his son Laertes: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” (William Shakespeare, 1598-1602, Act 1 Scene 3), for this clearly expresses the point of view people had and many still adopt. However this would mean a generalization of the term “debt”, which cannot be made that easily: “To say that all debt is bad is to say that all debt is alike – which is simply not true” (Tim Cestnick, 2005, p.16).