Nearly 85 years ago, Wesley Clair Mitchell, the acknowledged leader of American economists during the first half of this century, wrote: "Important as the art of spending is, we have developed less skill in its practice than in the practice of making money. Common sense forbids our wasting dollars earned by irksome efforts; and yet we are notoriously extravagant. Ignorance of qualities, uncertainty of taste, lack of accounting, carelessness about prices. Many of us scarcely know what becomes of our money."More than ever, in our world of ever-increasing credit card debt, lenient bankruptcy...