| Subject: | Re: [socialcredit] Definition of usury. | | Date: | Wednesday, June 25, 2008 04:37:04 (-0700) | | From: | keith wilde <kwilde @...............org>
|
| In reply to: | Message 5405 (written by Martin Hattersley) |
I had not previously given thought to this aspect of Douglas' position, but
financial newlsetters and books I have been reading over the past few years give
strong support to the sentiments quoted by Martin, especially those of Soddy.
That is, the financial sector has become enormous relative to sectors that
produce actual goods. The so-called "service" sector is mainly concerned with
churning various claims on real product and pandering to the desire of almost
everyone to retire on a nest-egg of such claims. The most alarming aspect of
this is that "investments" (peoples' savings) do not get invested in actual
productive capital but rather in more variations of financial instruments--more
paper. The contrast is stark between the United States (and other OECD) and
burgeoning countries like China and India, where investment is in steel and
concrete.
The following
comment about the biggest leveraged buyout in history (so it is touted) is
illustrative. (The writer is one of my colleagues here in Ottawa. He is a
retired investments banker, Nesbitt, Burns.)
The Ontario Teachers
Pension Plan may not be putting very much money into the leveraged buyout of
BCE. There are two or three US private equity firms also involved and they
needed a Canadian partner to make the deal happen. Most of the money for the
buyout will be borrowed. ...
BCE has always been considered a stable company with
steady earnings and was a good candidate for a buyout. However the private
equity firms, along with the brokers and dealers, will make huge amounts in
fees. The exisiting management of BCE will also make a lot of money. The
shareholders of BCE will receive a premium over the market price when the deal
was announced but I feel that we are letting a very good Canadian company go too
cheaply. ...
Keith Wilde
Martin Hattersley
<jmartinh@shaw.ca> wrote: I have been interested by the
discussion on what is usury that has been
taking place.
R.H.Tawney, in his
classic "Relligion and the Rise of Capitalism", after
discussing and dismissing
various types of dealing which involve risk, and
so are not usurious, gives a
definition as follows:
"What remained to the end unlawful was that which appears
in modern
economics textbooks as 'pure interest' - interest as a fixed
payment
stipulated in advance for a loan of money or wares without risk to
the
lender.... The essence or usury was that it was certain, and that whether
the
borrower gained or lost, the usurer took his poind of flesh."
(Transaction
Publishers edition, 1998, p.42)
Summarizing the present relationship between the
Capitalist and the
Christian approaches to life, where the former has effectively
excluded the
area of commerce from the control of morality, he concludes: (ibid,
p.286)
"the quality in modern society which is most sharply opposed to the
teaching
ascribed to the founder of the Christian faith ... consists in
the
assumption, accepted by most reformers with hardly less naivete than by
the
defenders of the established order, that the attainment of material riches
is
the supreme object of human endeavour and the final criterion of
human
success...What is certain is that it is the negation of any system
of
thought or morals which can, except by a metaphor, be described as
Christian.
Compromise is as impossible between the church of Christ and the
idolatry of
Wealth, which is the practical religion of Capitalist societies,
as it was
between the Church and the State idolatry of the Roman Empire."
In his "Wealth,
Virtual Wealth and Debt", Nobelist Frederick Soddy sets out
the psychology of
this approach in the following words: (page 122)
"Psychologically, the economic
aim of the individual
is, always has been,
and probably always will be, to secure a permanent
revenue independent of
further effort, proof against the passage of time and the
chance of
circumstance, to support himself in old age and his family after him
in
perpetuity. He endeavours to do so by accumulating so much property in the
heyday of his youth that he and his heirs may live on the interest on it in
perpetuity afterwards. Economic and social history is the conflict of this
human aspiration with the laws of physics, which make such a perpetuum
mobile impossible, and reduces the problem merely to the method by which one
individual may get another individual or the community into his debt and
prevent repayment, so that the individual or community must share the
produce of their efforts with their creditor."
Something that concerns me
about Douglas is the fact that he appears to wish
to superimpose his Social
Credit remedies on a
banking system not
fundamentally changed from the present. As I see it, the
toleration of
interest (reward without risk), is in fact a means by which those
who issue
credit become more and more wealthy at the expenses of the public, the
value
of whose money is steadily eroded by inflation. It's certainly happening
at
the present time, when the system at least in the United States appears to
have been pushed to the limits, and all signs are pointing at the moment to
a very unpleasant period of "Stagflation". Maybe this is why Muslims, who do
not allow this type of banking, are so unpopular in the Capitalist
world.
Comments, anyone?
Martin Hattersley, 5929-189 St.,
EDMONTON AB CANADA
T6M 2J1
Phone (780) 483-5442
e-mail
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