Usury in the USA

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GECON-01-140314.html



Usury in the USA
By Noureddine Krichene
Mar 14, '14

Former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke locked the US into a regime of near-zero interest rates. Saving accounts are practically denied any interest income, losing about 30% a year in value compared to stocks and 15% a year compared to housing. To keep interest rates so low, Bernanke had to print billions of dollars every month, pushing the balance sheet at the Fed to US$4.2 trillion. And the Fed will keep increasing the money base ad infinitum, from $4.2 trillion to $10 trillion to $100 trillion, and eventually even further.

The damage inflicted by Bernanke is beyond imagination and difficult to reverse. The US went through a terrible financial crisis in 2008, and has been suffering mass unemployment, impoverishment and financial chaos. Like someone hooked on heroin, the process of capital destruction has become politically irreversible. The addict cannot quit until he takes his life.

Usury laws once existed in many European countries. For instance, in the United Kingdom, usury laws once capped interest rates at 12% per year, then at 5% per year. But these laws were repealed completely in the mid-19th century to allow the market mechanism to allocate resources efficiently. Now the Fed has forced new usury laws on the United States by keeping interest rates so low.

~snip~

We should heed the words of Thomas Jefferson, the third US president and a strong opponent of central banking: "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

[Petrushka]

1. We were taught (in the 40s and 50s) that interest on a loan or credit account could not exceed 6%.

Anything more than 6% was considered usury and only "loan sharks" were usurers. The interest rate charged on today's credit cards---13%-15%---would have been sufficient reason to have prosecuted yesterday's usurer and locked him in the pokey for a few years.