Talk:Usury

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Ezra Pound[edit]

"In the early 20th century Ezra Pound's anti-usury poetry was not primarily based on the moral injustice of interest but on the fact that excess capital was no longer devoted to artistic patronage, as it could now be used for capitalist business investment."

I take issue with the words "not primarily". This statement is speculative, misleading, and inconsistent with the content of Pound's poems (specifically Canto XLV), his stated views, and extant criticism (that I have found), and should be removed. In fact, it is in clear contradiction of Canto XLV, which explicitly decries the moral injustice of usury, in many contexts, not only "the fact that excess capital was no longer devoted to artistic patronage".

The link to the citation originally provided is now broken, and appears to have come from a professor's lecture notes. This statement is a selectively narrow re-interpretation of Ezra Pound, perhaps based on a misunderstanding of the source originally cited, which is no longer online, or else an attempt to de-politicize his writing. I have found another essay, Analysis and Commentary of Canto XLV, which states that Pound was concerned with artistic production--but not primarily so.

If there are no objections I will write and submit an edit to this section. Ezra Pound's Canto XLV is one of the most famous polemics against usury in English literature and deserves longer discussion in this article.

Please read Canto XLV by Ezra Pound. - Shadowblinky (talk) 18:35, 14 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hinduism and usury[edit]

There is one reference early on in the text that some verses in the Rig Veda prohibited usury and there is, in fact, a reference to a 1929 book. But it does not illustrate it. This "hit-and-run" reference must be substantiated.


i agree with this comment the vedas dont even discuss society very much id be very surprised if they reference usury what the guy is probably talking about is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashistha_Dharmasutra which is not a vedic text Wikipedia editing expert Benjamin Ikuta advised me to post this here, you've heard of him I assume. I hope this is quickly resolved thank you.

Lol, thanks. I've tagged it as dubious for now. If no one objects, it can be removed. Benjamin (talk) 09:44, 7 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On pages 4-6 of the cited source "Jain, L. C." The author discuses attitudes toward usury in "Sutra Times" (700-100 B.C.) which is about 700 year after the Vedic period. During that period, he says, certain Castes were prohibited from practicing usury. I will update the article to better reflect what is actually said in the source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrianJZ (talk • contribs) 17:14, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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"Jews were forced into money lending"[edit]

I have put a citation needed here. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, authors of The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 suggests otherwise, that there was no legal impairment to Jews joining guilds, and that most Jews in European societies were farmers. Indeed, the great Rabbinical authority Rashi was a winemaker. I don't think it helps understanding the historical reasons for Jewish involvement in Medieval finance if we persist with this idea, which has little historical evidence to support it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.241.217 (talk) 18:45, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Current canon law status[edit]

It has been claimed that the 1917 Code of Canon Law was the first time the Roman Catholic Church legalized interest outright.[1] If a good source can be found, that would be relevant for this article. Daask (talk) 23:54, 27 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Paul S. Mills, John R. Presley , Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice, page 105, McMillan Press Ltd (1999). ISBN 978-0-312-22448-6

Original Research[edit]

Triklod, Most of what you added on 2019-09-11 appears to be original research, please provide citations not just for facts, but for arguments. See WP:PRIMARY and WP:SYN. I have marked offending sections with the appropriate templates, and will remove them in a few days if they aren't properly cited. BrianJZ (talk) 01:05, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed one flagged instance since it is truly difficult to fix. As for the others:

  • With regards to "defined for the first time", this is stated in the article "The Red Herring of Usury" (inline citation #51 at the time writing this), in the fifth paragraph from the bottom: "As these ethical and economic principles became fully appreciated, and as civilization progressed (...) In the face of this change, the Church defined what is meant by usury." I assume the author performed due diligence. Will this be an appropriate citation?
  • With regards to the "operating in the pre-industrial mindset", I concur that it is rather biased. My objective was to call attention to the fact Benedict XIV lived in a pre-industrial world and wrote rules for that world - and that the reader should take that into consideration when interpreting the encyclical. Would it suffice to state "Pope Benedict XIV's encyclical Vix Pervenit, written prior the development of modern commerce, gives the reasons why usury is sinful:" ?
  • And finally as to the big section: the paragraph "The Roman Catholic Church has always" is my summary of two sources quoted inline: Palms article "The Red Herring of Usury" (citation #51) and the old CE article "Usury" (citation #53). The source articles are pretty big and I though it would be of service that they be summarized. I have now added a longish citation from Rickaby which goes after basically the same thing as my summary. I specifically chose this paragraph (pages 262-263) of the book because I think it is more extreme (proves the point better) than the previous paragraph (pages 261-262) which in effect only restates my summary with fewer words.
  • As to the paragraph "It can be proposed", this was me keeping intact the basic semantics of the Wikipedia article before my edit. It contained the following sentence, without any quotations whatsoever: "The Roman Catholic Church has always condemned usury, but in modern times, with the rise of capitalism and the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in majority Catholic countries, this prohibition on usury has not been enforced." I wanted to retain the "prohibition on usury has not been enforced", as not to trample the work of the previous author, but it was difficult to do so without weasel words. As I understand, the Catholic Church doesn't subscribe to this idea, I don't - making it difficult to argue for this idea - and the original editor didn't leave any citations. To alleviate, we can use the old Catholic Encyclopedia, article on usury which has the following: "Even at the present day, a small number of French catholics (Abbé Morel, "Du prêt à intéret"; Modeste, "Le prêt à intérêt, dernière forme de l'esclavage") see in the attitude of the Church only a tolerance justified by the fear of greater evils." I managed to track down the book by Modeste, but (a) I don't know French, (b) I don't want to quote a book I don't understand and (c) it's a webshop page. I'm sure I'll get tracked down and killed by wikibots if I "quote" a webshop page of a book.

Perhaps the start of that paragraph can be changed to somehow include the two authors and their books, as an example of the proposal in practice? Triklod (talk) 18:00, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

propose dropping "avoidance_mechanisms_and_interest-free_lending" section[edit]

For the avoidance_mechanisms_and_interest-free_lending section to make sense, we should split the article into:

  • Usury (charging of excessive interest)
  • Usury (charging of interest)

and the listed items would presumably go into the "Usury (charging of interest)" article.

But these sub-topics mostly wouldn't belong there:

  • "micro-lending" is about providing seed money to spur some economic development, made more feasible by avoiding interest.
  • "Non-recourse mortgages" may have some tangential connection to Sharia banking, due to the lender accepting risk if the investment doesn't work out... but this is just too tenuous.
  • "interest-free banks" are not about excessive interest or the immorality of charging interest.
  • Zinskauf seems to demonstrate the "time value of money", which, after all, is what interest is about.

I suggest that the simplest solution is to drop the section, each individual item already has an article, so these can be added to the "see also" list, and nobody will really care. Thoughts? Fabrickator (talk) 06:08, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think splitting the article is good. And unsplit, avoidance mechanisms are definitely part of the topic. So Islamic banking belongs. Interest free loans (that just happen to be IF, and nothing to do with avoiding U) doesn't belong, though William M. Connolley (talk) 10:59, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If "avoidance mechanisms" is included within the page, then it would seem that "charging non-usurious interest rates" ought to be one of the techniques to avoid usury. At the same time, some of the arrangements that technically avoid interest can be considered usury under the laws of certain U.S. states. Fabrickator (talk) 22:36, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This article is titled Usury, but nearly the entire article is dedicated to detailing various religious or legal prohibitions to usury, responses to usury, massacres because of usury, but not the practice of usury. The "England" section describes a massacre of Jews in the late 1100s, but no detail of any lending practices in the 1100s. It also doesn't describe current usury in England. There is little to the entire article on examples of actual usury, until a few in the final "avoidance mechanisms" section. Since that section provides examples of usury, shouldn't it be reorganized, retitled "examples," and then made the primary paragraph? Can some of the "see also" articles such as Loansharking, Predatory Lending, etc. be incorporated in that paragraph as examples? Then all of the other sections could get put under a "Religious and Legal Prohibitions" header. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.137.1.23 (talk) 01:28, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

New Testament[edit]

The passage quoted from the NT - And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them, expecting nothing in return - isn't obviously a prohibition on usury; it doesn't mention interest at all. It appears to suggest lending, even if you don't expect your principal to be repaid. If it is usually interpreted as prohibiting usury, then it needs a ref to support that interpretation.

The lead-in text to that quote - The New Testament likewise teaches giving rather than loaning money to those who need it: is also confused William M. Connolley (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

How has this article been allowed to become such a sad, sick joke[edit]

Using a single Parisian document from 1799 to show the treatment of an entire ethnoreligious group across an entire continent is just deliberately and obviously misleading. What editor was that, and why are they not being held responsible or accountable in any way? 206.174.198.66 (talk) 13:58, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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