They could buy all the cars and oversized Christmas tree ornaments they wanted, unless they happened to run up an unpayable credit card bill in the process.
The government I lead will not leave the next generation, your children and grandchildren with a debt to settle that we were too weak to pay ourselves.
Businessmen could not pay back money they owed the banks. And they could not get loans to keep their businesses open. Many factories closed. Great numbers of people were out of work.
So, if you give the pawnshop your wedding ring in order to get a short-term loan, and you are not able to pay the loan back, the pawnshop will sell your wedding ring to someone else.
When the economy is bad some people cannot afford to pay the loan that they have on their house;they can't make their payments, and so the bank takes the house back and in many cases, auctions the home off.
And soon enough even a mountain of silver couldn't pay for all their warring, and the Spanish crown had to borrow money, which they couldn’t pay back, so they defaulted on their debt several times in the 17th century.