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).