Comments:

• The Free Market Leads  INEVITABLY to Extreme Concentration of Wealth.
• Be sure one does not have the tail wagging the dog.
• Fundamentally, interest usury is just slavery with extra steps.
• MONEY is the lifeblood of civilization and USURY is the poison that kills it just like vaccination poisons human blood!
• Usury is condemned in the Bible. Usury was condemned among pagan nations and usury was condemned by the early church.
• The word ‘interest’ is used as a replacement for the word usury.

The moneychangers hate the word ‘usury’ and have attempted to drive it out of the dictionary. They have replaced it with a modern definition:

1. The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate.
2. An excessive or illegally high rate of interest charged on borrowed money.
3. Archaic or obsolete. Interest charged or paid on a loan.

A key text in the debate on Usury is the Canon XVII of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea in AD 325, which reads:

“Since many clergyman have been induced by greed and avarice to forget the sacred text, “who does not put out his money at interest”, and to charge one per cent a month on loans, this holy and great synod judges that if any are found after this decision to receive interest by contract or to transact the business in any other way or to charge a rate of fifty per cent or in general to devise any other contrivance for the sake of dishonourable gain, they shall be deposed from the clergy and their names struck from the roll.”

Thus, the Church thinking at the time was to allow a limited Usury of about 12.7% per annum. Mohamed was a businessman and realised that businesses needed money before they could make money. He realised that limited usury was needed to maintain an economy. Thus usury was allowed for business purposes. The conundrum is that the usury creates more debt than money to repay the debt. Here is the graph for world money and world debt.

Worldwide, there is more debt than there is money. I usually tell the story this way:

“If you and I own all the gold in the world and you and I lend out all the gold, at the end of the year, they owe us gold plus ten percent. How can they repay us the gold?
We gradually take all their assets!”

However, we can live with the debt. Even China, which has changed from a nation of impoverished people to a world economic marvel within my lifetime has a massive debt issue:

China’s little secret is that the government debt is owed to the government. This is accomplished by the government creating a bank owned by the government which is commonly called a “Public Bank”, otherwise known as a ‘people’s bank’.

We can live with debt, but we cannot live with economic collapse. We cannot live a civilized life without a means of exchange. The means of exchange collapses under collapse of authority which is usually the government. However, sometimes this is done purposely by the elite to impose a system with even tighter control over the people. So a ruling elite, who may be those that pull the strings of a puppet government, may foment an uprising to depose a legitimate government using ‘do-gooders’ from society who revolt with good intention, but who subsequently get usurped and beheaded as the ruling elite consolidate power under the new replacement government. Such was the situation in the revolutions of the last few hundred years. ‘The Nameless War’ by Archibald Ramsey is a good run through of the procedure.

The bibles have plenty to say on the subject – even though they are somewhat out of tune with modern commerce. What is clear is that they were not blind to the topic as most are today. Proverbs 22:7 rants:

“Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender.”

For this is the way of the world – or rather the way of civilization.  Proverbs 18:23 sympathizes with:

“The poor plead for mercy, but the rich answer harshly.”

The irony of this message is strongly expressed by a man called Siracides in Ecclus. 13:3:

“The rich man hath done wrong, and yet he threateneth withal: the poor is wronged, and he must intreat also.”

The rich man has not only does wrong, but adds to the injury with harsh language and abuse, as if he were the sufferer. The indebted man, unable to pay due to the unpayable debts created by usury, has humbly asked for pardon, as if the poor man was in the wrong. Jesus had a word for this type of person along the lines of “You are hard of heart.” Poverty tells men they must not order or demand. Not understanding the horrific implications of usury emboldens the rich to take advantage of the poor and weak. “and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen…” shouts ‘Kings 2 4:1,2’. The daughters were taken as sex toys. It continues today as the enter prositution to pay debts.

The current generations have conned by banks, government, and universities to take out excessive debt in the form of caro loans, credit cards, and student debt. Millions of them land on websites where they seek ‘Sugar Daddies’ to pay off their debt — which is a soft term for protsitution. Large numbers of endebted students prop up the ple dancing and prostituton industries. One website alone reports that some 2.5 million college students have arrived in desperation. Their dream of ‘success’ leads them to prostitution. In total, Americans alone owe more than $1.3 trillion in student loan debt to federal government agencies and private lenders. Stopvaw.org reports:

“Traffickers often burden victims with excessive “debt” to trap them in bondage and exploit them for sex or labor. In the context of trafficking in women, debt bondage usually occurs when traffickers force women into prostitution to pay off ‘unlawful ‘debt’ purportedly incurred through [the women’s] transportation, recruitment, or even their crude ‘sale.’ ’ ”

As an excuse for their practice of usury, the moneychangers claim that usury, renamed as ‘interest’ is a necessary component of a successful economy. This is entirely untrue. The economy is unlocked by creating a Public Bank lending credit for worthwhile projects. The nation of King Solomon became the wealthiest nation in the biblical times by forbidding usury as witnessed by this difficult to interpret comment at I Kings 10:23-27:

“So king Solomon exceeded ALL the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom….The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones….”

Silver was real money at the time. He made money available. Today, we would consider a gradually rising money supply with an unchanged velocity to bring a prosperous society. We don’t see this much as we live under a constant semi-recession condition where money is drained from fruitful transactions by government whilst the well off have free reign to remove money from circulation and hoard it. Never forget that money is a freely created commodity. It costs nothing to create money. It flows out of a printing press. It is the movement of money that creates wealth. Oversupply is a problem. Under-supply is a problem. Hoarding is a problem. Movement is a benefit.

David Harvey joins the debate with:

“The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization, however, has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income…. This was achieved under the rubric of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. These include the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights; suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative forms of production and consumption; colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets; monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession.”

The Neocons are at it still!