I wish I could remember the footnote, but a few years back a colleague of mine was all excited about a "save the third world poor" book (written by a N Am neolib of course);  the thesis of the book was that 3rd world people were so poor because too many of them owned their homes outright!  they should, so said the author, take out mortgages and go into debt to liberate capital for investment and thereby achieve lots of prosperity.

When my colleague told me this remarkable theory, after politely replacing my jaw (Marley style), I said that the author must be either a loan shark or the consigliere for loan sharks.

What we have right now is the messy end state of an economy run by and for loan sharks.  Usury was rightly, imho, regarded as criminal in previous centuries.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...