7 July

Charging interest on loans used to be called usury. Today it's a common thing, but for thousands of years there were arguments about whether it should be allowed at all. Jesus and the moneylenders, for example - religions played a critical role in the debates. There are actually good reasons to think that interest is a very bad thing. It's quite possibly the root cause of a lot of the world's problems. In our rush to be 'modern' and to get rid of things like religions, we've lost a lot of wisdom. Even from the point of view of basic maths, many people are unaware that even a tiny interest rate of say 2% results in exponential growth. Or as Aristotle said (paraphrasing), no good can come from money breeding money.