The roaring 20's left America with a tremendous amount of inventions and developments, which most of them changed America for the better. But credit did not. Credit was the reason people were in debt before the Great Depression and is why many people lost everything they had. When people bought products on layaway, they didn't have to pay for the whole thing at the time of purchase and it made people go into debt. People took out loans for their homes or for stock purchases and sometimes they knew that they probably would never be able to pay it back. When farmers defaulted on their mortgages, banks were hit hard and many closed. When people sold their stocks that they had bought on margin, they lost money and so did banks. The banks didn't have enough money to lend out when the depression started because they had lost so much in the previous years. This all stemmed from the idea that a person could buy something on layaway or on credit and was a major cause of the Great Depression.