Usery and the financial crisis

[Bluegoat]

I was just over on the Frugality and Finances board, and I got to thinking about the financial crisis, and religious edicts against usury. I can't help but see a connection. Even in a larger sense, how our financial system is set up, the kind of lives we expect to lead...

What do people think about this? Most Christian churches do not actually observe this any more, and have investments etc. I am not a financial whiz so I don't have any rock solid thoughts.

[Tradd]

Do you have a copy of CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity"? I remember him talking about usury in it, but I don't remember what he wrote.

[Bluegoat]

Originally Posted by Tradd

Do you have a copy of CS Lewis' "Mere Christianity"? I remember him talking about usury in it, but I don't remember what he wrote.

If I recall correctly, he was quite brief. He said that some would say the structure of the modern financial structures has some significant differences from the idea of money lending in earlier times, particularly in relation to the joint stock company? But he seemed to wonder if that was really that significant.

I remember when I studied the Divine Comedy in university, when we were looking at the usurers in Hell, they were in the same place as homosexuals. The instructor said that for Dante, they were comparable in that one took a naturally fruitful activity and made it sterile, while the other took something that is by nature not fruitful and makes it multiply.

[Watershippy]

I just received the May issue of The Catholic Worker and there is a long article about usury, reprinted from 1960 (about how they lost one of their houses to eminant domain, and when the gov't finally sent them the $ for the house a year later, they included interest. Dorothy Day refused to accept the interest money.) I don't really want to type the whole article, but I thought it was well written, so see if you can get your hands on the May issue. The article includes a quote from someone name G.K. Chesterton (who I am going to look up in the library now) that I liked: "Whose money was the interest which the city was paying us? Where did it come from? Money does not breed money. It is sterile." I suspect he is thinking someone got cheated out of their money somewhere farther up the line, resulting in extra money somewhere else, or that in this case, the gov't was able to pay interest to the Catholic Worker because they had been involved in some underhanded practice that left them with the extra money to begin with.

[Bluegoat]

I love Chesterton, he is a very interesting fellow, though some of his stuff can seem a bit thick stylistically. His most famous work is The Everlasting Man, and he wrote lots of other things including a nice biography of St Francis, and the Father Brown stories. (There are a series of mystery shows based on the novels that are kind of fun.)

Apparently he was a bit of a difficult personality, and when someone asked him how he could be such a jerk when he was a Christian, he replied imagine what a jerk he would have been if he weren't a Christian.

I am going to look for that article, thanks! If I find it I'll maybe post a comment.

[Liquesce]

I keep happening on finger-wagging articles on Islamic finance and how it could have prevented this mess and now can save us all ...... but you know, greed is greed. It exists in any system. Some maybe mitigate its power on paper better than others, but any system can be worked to ugly ends.

[holyhelianthus]

I find this very interesting! I have to admit that I had never really heard of usury before reading this thread and so had to wikipedia it.

A bit OT-

Originally Posted by Watershippy

I just received the May issue of The Catholic Worker and there is a long article about usury, reprinted from 1960 (about how they lost one of their houses to eminant domain, and when the gov't finally sent them the $ for the house a year later, they included interest. Dorothy Day refused to accept the interest money.)

How do you subscribe to the Catholic Worker? Is there a way to read it online? We have both looked online for some information and we must be totally blind because we can't seem to figure it out

[cappuccinosmom]

Apparently he was a bit of a difficult personality, and when someone asked him how he could be such a jerk when he was a Christian, he replied imagine what a jerk he would have been if he weren't a Christian.

This is totally OT but:



I love Chesterton!

[hopefulfaith]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

IApparently he was a bit of a difficult personality, and when someone asked him how he could be such a jerk when he was a Christian, he replied imagine what a jerk he would have been if he weren't a Christian.

[Watershippy]

I wish the Catholic Worker were online, but it's not

Here's how to subscribe from catholicworker.org: "The Catholic Worker newspaper is not online. Subscription or copy requests must be sent by regular mail to The Catholic Worker, 36 East First Street, New York, NY 10003, United States. The newspaper was started by Dorothy Day herself in New York City in the 1930s'. The price has been and will remain a penny a copy, excluding mailing costs. It is issued seven times per year and a year's subscription is available for 25 cents (30 cents for foreign subscriptions), though all donations in excess of that amount go to the hospitality houses associated with the paper, Maryhouse and St. Joseph House."

I really must look up this Chesterton! He sounds like a hoot!

DP and I had a good conversation about usury this afternoon. He thinks that the reason usury is forbidden is that it can force the debtor into a type of slavery and force him/her to be an accomplice in whatever you chose to do with their money. Kind of like how a few people in power get to decide how much money to print and who is given credit, but everyone else is basically forced to follow their rules and play their game-- it is nearly impossible to opt out of the financial system, or even to make sure that your investments are never used to harm someone else, your paycheck isn't paid with money your company cheated someone else out of. And we end up spending so much of our time working for a company's financial profit, just so we can get money to live, rather than spend our lives working for the things our religion tells us is worthwhile, just because we can't opt out of needing to make money. Now this is a lofty conversation, but I hope there are some practical implications.

[holyhelianthus]

Thanks so much! I'm so annoyed we didn't see it. I guess we're so use to things being right in our faces.

[Bluegoat]

I've found what I think was the article, and it was really interesting. It talked about Chesterton's thoughts on capitalism, which he defines quite strictly as a system in which a few people hold the capital. He seems to think (I think) a system where every person has an amount of property suitable to meet his needs is a better idea.

I think when we are thinking about usury, is that we need to think about what money really represents. It seems to me that it represents items that you can trade it for and especially, a given amount of work. Traditionally, it is not usury if the investor shares the risk and receives a dividend, only if the investment accrues interest with no risk.

I looked up Muslim investing on Wikipedia, and actually I do think it would have averted the financial crisis. But there wouldn't have been the same middlemen getting rich. Too bad. The article on usury is also interesting, especially Thomas Aquinas's argument - he says that investing for interest is like charging a person for a bottle of wine and charging them again to drink it.