Usury, Japan & Germany

The tension between "church and state" (or should I say Mosque & State) is in more active tension in Islamdom than in Christiandom.    Although I think anti-usury, pro-prosperity argument is on the ropes in Islamdom, not doubt it has been knocked out and dragged off the deck in Christiandom.  My course received one enrollment this quarter, and upon examining the materials, the enrollment was cancelled.  No-usury is a hard sell.

The problem is to believe in the unseen.  In the Catholic Mass, there is a profession of faith in which the visible and invisible is cited.  Bastiat talked about the unseen in economics.  Prosperity has at its root the word "hope" and that is for something imagined, but by definition not yet seen.  all of the good we can have necessarily comes from that which we cannot yet see, yet to be discovered.  that takes freedom to discover, freedom from force and fraud.  The state can only count and measure what is, and then uses force and fraud to advance its agenda.

Instead of freedom, we let usury flower, damage follow, and then attend only to the seen, the damage done.  All of the news is about the politics of attending to the damage done by usury.

Mish Shedlock summarizes the problems in Japan, masters of modern banking:

Some of the reasons for lower family formation are universal, others like nuclear waste are country specific.
Inflating money increases asset prices (until the bubbles pop) but that does not help those fresh out of college with no assets. Pumping up home prices helps banks stuck with housing inventory, but it hurts those seeking to buy a first-time home.
Easy money policy is to the benefit of those with first access to money: the banks and the already wealthy. Easy money is to the detriment of everyone else. 

Yes, usury leads to nuclear waste, because such monstrosities cannot be financed without cheap money to make them viable, government power to make them not liable, and further usury to make them attractive as an investment.

Mish cites an article from Germany on the German family:

Euronews spoke to Udo Drews and Sabine Radtke who had still not been allocated a place at a day care centre after more than a year. The delay meant they had to choose a private one – which was more than twice the cost of a public facility. A full-time place there costs more than 1,000 euro a month.

So let's have mom have a career so she can pay someone to raise her kids?  Has anyone thought this through?

The solution is freedom, something both Jesus and Mohammed preached, and lived radically.  That the religious leaders gave the secular powers a pass to advance usury is how this problem entered our economies.  I am not calling for Imams and Bishops to raise armies, only to teach the truth, that usury is wrong, because it does damage.  And then to stop engaging in usury themselves.

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