Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Utopia of Usurers?

From the Social Credit list, the following comment:

I think it is fairly easy for most people to understand that all credit money comes into existence as a debt to some operator within the financial system. This is true, by definition, and some 97% of monies in the system is credit money. The crux of the matter is that the debt system, controlled by private financiers, is simply a tool for controlling the population at large by putting most everybody in a position of dependence on the financiers by way of debt.

The fundamental understanding that needs to dawn upon people is that this is a form of abuse because people are made to borrow, at interest, what they already own.

How long has it been since the Church last addressed the question of Usury? (ON USURY AND OTHER DISHONEST PROFIT. Vix Pervenit. Encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV promulgated on November 1, 1745)

In the intervening centuries, that which we borrow has changed. It is now credit instead of the capital which was the subject of Vix Prevenit; which that that the collection of reasonable interest on capital borrowing was deemed to not be usury. Does this hold for credit, though? When I, or a nation, borrows and what transacts is not transfer of capital but entries into legers, a very useful legal fiction, but a fiction none the less, is it not usury to demand more of the fiction in return? Especially if the fiction is backed by the "full good faith of the nation" which is the common stock of us all, as the quote above states?

This is not a question I can answer, but I wish the Church would offer guidance in this.

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