Loans in Kenya on the security of Chattels: II

The economic aspects of the hire-purchase movement are well known and it is not intended to discuss them here. It will be sufficient to point out that hire-purchase finance enables people, in certain circumstances, to live by taking in, not each other's washing, but their own. This remarkable achievement was recently explained by The Times: “The reliance on funds from the public to finance consumer hire-purchase spending is, in fact, a paradox in that the public is ultimately financing itself. As it is pointed out in the second edition of Hire Purchase in a Free Society, the man who subscribes to a life endowment policy yet chooses to buy a car on hire-purchase rather than liquidate it may in effect be financing himself.