APPENDIX 3 - USURY
Brief History
It is very important to know that the Official Story says that the Jews were the lenders on usury, but the true story is that they were not the Jews of the bible, they were not Semites. They were the Babylonian Rhadenites who claimed to be Ashkenazi Jews who adopted a facade of Judaism so that they could take advantage of the Bible legitimizing Jews lending to Christians. The Protestant Reformation was set in motion and guided by the hidden hand of the intergenerational organized crime syndicate inspired by and held together by Satanic rituals that got its start in Sumer, by exploiting the Gold Silver ratio, and that today is behind the Illuminati that recruit from the Masonic Order and have engineered the American Empire and destroyed the Republic for their benefit. They are the force behind the technocratic, transhumanist, totalitarian tyranny coming at us like a tsunami. And their wealth and power is all based on money as valuable in itself and usury.
This view of history is available in numerous books by authors who documented the original sources from the historical period of each development.
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The following excerpt is from the Ayn Rand website. See https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/government-and-business/capitalism/The-Morality-of-Moneylending-A-Short-History/
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Our brief history begins with Aristotle’s view on the subject.
Aristotle
The practice of lending money at interest was met with hostility as far back as ancient Greece, and even Aristotle (384–322 b.c.) believed the practice to be unnatural and unjust. In the first book of Politics he writes:
The most hated sort [of moneymaking], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural use of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term Usury which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money, because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of making money this is the most unnatural.
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Aristotle believed that charging interest was immoral because money is not productive. If you allow someone to use your orchard, he argued, the orchard bears fruit every year—it is productive—and from this product the person can pay you rent. But money, Aristotle thought, is merely a medium of exchange. When you loan someone money, he receives no value over and above the money itself. The money does not create more money—it is barren. On this view, an exchange of $100 today for $100 plus $10 in interest a year from now is unjust, because the lender thereby receives more than he gave, and what he gave could not have brought about the 10 percent increase. Making money from money, according to Aristotle, is “unnatural” because money, unlike an orchard, cannot produce additional value. …
….Aristotle’s economic and moral view of usury was reflected in ancient culture for a few hundred years, but moral condemnation of the practice became increasingly pronounced. The Greek writer Plutarch (46–127 a.d.), for example, in his essay “Against Running In Debt, Or Taking Up Money Upon Usury,” described usurers as “wretched,” “vulture-like,” and “barbarous.” In Roman culture, Seneca (ca. 4 b.c.–65 a.d.) condemned usury for the same reasons as Aristotle; Cato the Elder (234–149 b.c.) famously compared usury to murder;3 and Cicero (106–43 b.c.) wrote that “these profits are despicable which incur the hatred of men, such as those of . . . lenders of money on usury.”
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As hostile as the Greeks and Romans generally were toward usury, their hostility was based primarily on their economic view of the practice, which gave rise to and was integrated with their moral view of usury. The Christians, however, were another matter, and their position on usury would become the reigning position in Western thought up to the present day….
….During the Dark Ages, the concept of an economy had little meaning. Human society had reverted to a pre civilized state, and the primary means of trade was barter. Money all but disappeared from European commerce for centuries. There was, of course, some trade and some lending, but most loans were made with goods, and the interest was charged in goods. These barter-based loans, primitive though they were, enabled people to survive the tough times that were inevitable in an agrarian society.
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Yet the church violently opposed even such subsistence-level lending.
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During this period, the Bible was considered the basic source of knowledge and thus the final word on all matters of importance. For every substantive question and problem, scholars consulted scripture for answers—and the Bible clearly opposed usury. In the Old Testament, God says to the Jews: “[He that] Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live . . . he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” Ezekiel 18:13. And:
Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money; usury of victuals; usury of anything that is lent upon usury.
Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury, that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. Deuteronomy 23:19–20.
In one breath, God forbade usury outright; in another, He forbade the Jews to engage in usury with other Jews but permitted them to make loans at interest to non-Jews.
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Although the New Testament does not condemn usury explicitly, it makes clear that one’s moral duty is to help those in need, and thus to give to others one’s own money or goods without the expectation of anything in return—neither interest nor principal. As Luke plainly states, “lend, hoping for nothing again.” Jesus’ expulsion of the moneychangers from the temple is precisely a parable conveying the Christian notion that profit is evil, particularly profit generated by moneylending. Christian morality, the morality of divinely mandated altruism, expounds the virtue of self-sacrifice on behalf of the poor and the weak; it condemns self-interested actions, such as profiting—especially profiting from a seemingly exploitative and unproductive activity such as usury.
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Although Jews were legally permitted to lend to Christians—and although Christians saw some practical need to borrow from them and chose to do so—Christians resented this relationship. Jews appeared to be making money on the backs of Christians while engaging in an activity biblically prohibited to Christians on punishment of eternal damnation. Christians, accordingly, held these Jewish usurers in contempt. (Important roots of anti-Semitism lie in this biblically structured relationship.)
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Opposition to Jewish usurers was often violent. In 1190, the Jews of York were massacred in an attack planned by members of the nobility who owed money to the Jews and sought to absolve the debt through violence. During this and many other attacks on Jewish communities, accounting records were destroyed and Jews were murdered. As European historian Joseph Patrick Byrne reports:
“Money was the reason the Jews were killed, for had they been poor, and had not the lords of the land been indebted to them, they would not have been killed.” But the “lords” were not the only debtors: the working class and underclass apparently owed a great deal, and these violent pogroms gave them the opportunity to destroy records of debt as well as the creditors themselves.” ….
…Like the Greeks and Romans, Christian thinkers viewed certain economic transactions as zero-sum phenomena, in which a winner always entailed a loser. In the practice of usury, the lender seemed to grow richer without effort—so it had to be at the expense of the borrower, who became poorer. But the Christians’ economic hostility toward usury was grounded in and fueled by biblical pronouncements against the practice—and this made a substantial difference. The combination of economic and biblical strikes against usury—with an emphasis on the latter—led the Church to utterly vilify the usurer, who became a universal symbol for evil. Stories describing the moneylenders’ horrible deaths and horrific existence in Hell were common. One bishop put it concisely:
God created three types of men: peasants and other laborers to assure the subsistence of the others, knights to defend them, and clerics to govern them. But the devil created a fourth group, the usurers. They do not participate in men’s labors, and they will not be punished with men, but with the demons. For the amount of money they receive from usury corresponds to the amount of wood sent to Hell to burn them. ….
Renaissance and Reformation
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The start of the 16th century brought about a commercial boom in Europe. It was the Golden Age of Exploration. Trade routes opened to the New World and expanded to the East, bringing unprecedented trade and wealth to Europe. To fund this trade, to supply credit for commerce and the beginnings of industry, banks were established throughout Europe. Genoese and German bankers funded Spanish and Portuguese exploration and the importation of New World gold and silver. Part of what made this financial activity possible was the new tolerance, in some cities, of usury….
…Martin Luther (1483–1546), a leader of the Reformation, believed that usury was inevitable and should be permitted to some extent by civil law. Luther believed in the separation of civil law and Christian ethics. This view, however, resulted not from a belief in the separation of state and religion, but from his belief that the world and man were too corrupt to be guided by Christianity. Christian ethics and the Old Testament commandments, he argued, are utopian dreams, unconnected with political or economic reality. He deemed usury unpreventable and thus a matter for the secular authorities, who should permit the practice and control it.
However, Luther still considered usury a grave sin, and in his later years wrote:
“[T]here is on earth no greater enemy of man, after the Devil, than a gripe-money and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men. . . . And since we break on the wheel and behead highwaymen, murderers, and housebreakers, how much more ought we to break on the wheel and kill . . . hunt down, curse, and behead all usurers!” …..
…John Calvin, (1509–1564), another Reformation theologian, had a more lenient view than Luther. He rejected the notion that usury is actually banned in the Bible. Since Jews are allowed to charge interest from strangers, God cannot be against usury. It would be fantastic, Calvin thought, to imagine that by “strangers” God meant the enemies of the Jews; and it would be most unchristian to legalize discrimination. According to Calvin, usury does not always conflict with God’s law, so not all usurers need to be damned. There is a difference, he believed, between taking usury in the course of business and setting up business as a usurer. If a person collects interest on only one occasion, he is not a usurer. The crucial issue, Calvin thought, is the motive. If the motive is to help others, usury is good, but if the motive is personal profit, usury is evil.
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Calvin claimed that the moral status of usury should be determined by the golden rule. It should be allowed only insofar as it does not run counter to Christian fairness and charity. Interest should never be charged to a man in urgent need, or to a poor man; the “welfare of the state” should always be considered. But it could be charged in cases where the borrower is wealthy and the interest will be used for Christian good. Thus he concluded that interest could neither be universally condemned nor universally permitted—but that, to protect the poor, a maximum rate should be set by law and never exceeded. ….
…The prevailing view that emerged in the late 16th century (and that, to a large extent, is still with us today) is that money is not barren and that usury plays a productive role in the economy. Usury, however, is unchristian; it is motivated by a desire for profit and can be used to exploit the poor. It can be practical, but it is not moral; therefore, it should be controlled by the state and subjected to regulation in order to restrain the rich and protect the poor.
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This Christian view has influenced almost all attitudes about usury since. In a sense, Luther and Calvin are responsible for today’s so-called “capitalism.” They are responsible for the guilt many people feel from making money and the guilt that causes people to eagerly regulate the functions of capitalists. Moreover, the Protestants were the first to explicitly assert and sanction the moral-practical dichotomy—the idea that the moral and the practical are necessarily at odds. Because of original sin, the Protestants argued, men are incapable of being good, and thus concessions must be made in accordance with their wicked nature. Men must be permitted to some extent to engage in practical matters such as usury, even though such practices are immoral…..
Protestant Reformation
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By identifying and then funding the rebellious priests such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, whose interpretation of the Bible led to the protestant work ethic, the ban on interest bearing debt was gradually removed, and usury became defined as excessive interest.
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In The Lost Science of Money, Zarlenga describes the shift of the usurers from Rome to Antwerp and how they undermined the dominance of the Church with its ban on usury by having the bible translated into the common languages and printing and distributing millions of them. From The Lost Science of Money, page 237:
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THE GREAT ENGLISH BIBLE FLOOD
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The Jewish press of Joseph Athias "claimed to have printed so many Bibles in English that every servingmaid and ploughboy might aspire to own one," wrote Van Dillen. Herbert Bloom puts the number of Athias Bibles at one million, with destinations of England and Scotland.
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Sending a million Bibles to England had far reaching political effects and Athias was not the only Bible printer. The most notable was Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel (1604-1657), who began printing in 1627. According to Tovey, Manasseh had converted to Judaism; his wife was of the Arabanel family, which claimed a direct line to David of Biblical fame. But this may have been put out for English consumption, as it is not mentioned in the modem Jewish Encyclopaedia.
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Manasseh is credited with printing the first Hebrew book and printed mostly Bibles. He engaged in grandiose geopolitical operations, especially in his relations with Oliver Cromwell. In Chapter 10 we discuss how he led efforts to gain readmission of the Jews to England, who had been banned there since 1290 for clipping the English coinage.
From The Lost Science of Money, page 256 (emphasis added in bold):
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THE RELIGIOUS UNDERMINING OF THE MONARCHY
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Thomas Hobbs, the renowned 17th century theorist on government power, provides rare insight on the destruction of the monarchy in his major, though suppressed work, Behemoth (not Leviathan!) …
"The seducers were of divers sorts. One sort was the ministers,
'Ministers of Christ' (as they called themselves) ... and sometimes 'Gods
Ambassadors' (commonly called Presbyterians)
"(others) were papists .. .independents for religious freedom, Anabaptists ... Fifth Monarchy Men ... Quakers, Adamites, etc. "And these were the enemies which arose against his majesty from the private interpretation of the scripture, which had been exposed to every man's scanning in his mother tongue."
"For after the Bible was translated into English every man, - nay every boy and wench that could read English, - thought they spoke with God almighty ... and every man became a Judge of religion and an interpreter of the scripture for himself."
From The Lost Science of Money, page 203 regarding the Scholastics
…Neither a complete ban on interest, mistakenly attributed to the Church, nor a laissez-faire approach would be correct in principal, or workable in practice.
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Nor is the solution some halfway mixing of these extremes. The question is complex and must be dealt with intelligently. Helping to identify the correct monetary approach to this question is a central theme of our work. Understanding the monetary concepts presented here is a pre-condition for resolving the usury problem.
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We saw that Calvin's bibliolatry, his deification of the Bible as the absolute word of God, set in motion forces that still afflict us, especially in modern day America. The destructive effects of this Bible worship are visible in political discussions, especially, for example, on talk radio. To hear the voices of ill educated men and women confidently airing insane views, must rank among the most demoralizing things that the good intelligent youth of this nation endure daily.
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In leaving the Scholastics, we especially note their inability to understand the monetary importance of bank created credits. Thus later thinkers and legal systems, looking back to the scholastics for guidance, did not properly understand and limit the use of bank credits as money. Society continues to pay the price for that major oversight; but we make proposals in Chapter 24 to rectify it.
Thomas Aquinas
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The following excerpt is from the oll.libertyfund website. They got the information from this Source: Aquinas Ethicus: or, the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas. A Translation of the Principal Portions of the Second part of the Summa Theologica, with Notes by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (London: Burns and Oates, 1892). Vol. 2. See https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/aquinas-on-usury
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QUESTION LXXVIII. OF THE SIN OF USURY THAT IS COMMITTED IN LOANS.
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Article I.—Is it a sin to take usury for the lending of money?
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R: To take usury for the lending of money is in itself unjust, because it is a case of selling what is non-existent; and that is manifestly the setting up of an inequality contrary to justice. In evidence of this we must observe that there are certain things, the use of which is the consumption of the thing; as we consume wine by using it to drink, and we consume wheat by using it for food. Hence in such things the use of the thing ought not to be reckoned apart from the thing itself; but whosoever has the use granted to him, has thereby granted to him the thing; and therefore in such things lending means the transference of ownership. If therefore any vendor wanted to make two separate sales, one of the wine and the other of the use of the wine, he would be selling the same thing twice over, or selling the non-existent: hence clearly he would be committing the sin of injustice. And in like manner he commits injustice, who lends wine or wheat, asking a double recompense to be given him, one a return of an equal commodity, another a price for the use of the commodity, which price of use is called usury.
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But there are things the use of which is not the consuming of the thing: thus the use of a house is inhabiting it, not destroying it. In such things ownership and use may be made the matter of separate grants. Thus one may grant to another the ownership of a house, reserving to himself the use of it for a time; or grant the use and reserve the ownership. And therefore a man may lawfully take a price for the use of a house, and besides demand back the house which he has lent, as we see in the hiring and letting of houses.
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Now according to the Philosopher, money was invented principally for the effecting of exchanges; and thus the proper and principal use of money is the consumption or disbursal of it, according as it is expended on exchanges.
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Article IV.—Is it lawful to borrow money at usury?
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R. It is nowise lawful to induce a man to sin; but to use the sin of another unto good is lawful; because God also uses all sins unto some good, inasmuch as He draws some good out of every evil. And therefore Augustine, in reply to a certain Publicola, who asked him whether it was lawful to take the oath of a man that swore by false gods, writes: “He who uses, not to evil, but to good, the word of another who swears by false gods, does not join in his sin whereby he has sworn by demons, but joins in his good faith whereby he has kept his word. But he would sin if he were to induce him to swear by false gods.” So in the case proposed we must say that it is nowise lawful to induce a man to lend at usury: it is lawful however for a good purpose, as for the relief of one’s own necessity or that of another, to borrow money at usury of him who is prepared so to transact usuriously; as it is lawful for him who falls among robbers to declare the goods that he has, to escape being slain, after the example of the ten men who said to Ismahel: “Kill us not, for we have stores in the field.”