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"Usury -- History"
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Beggar Thy Neighbor
The practice of charging interest on loans has been controversial since it was first mentioned in early recorded history. Lending is a powerful economic tool, vital to the development of society but it can also lead to disaster if left unregulated. Prohibitions against excessive interest, or usury, have been found in almost all societies since antiquity. Whether loans were made in kind or in cash, creditors often were accused of beggar-thy-neighbor exploitation when their lending terms put borrowers at risk of ruin. While the concept of usury reflects transcendent notions of fairness, its definition has varied over time and place: Roman law distinguished between simple and compound interest, the medieval church banned interest altogether, and even Adam Smith favored a ceiling on interest. But in spite of these limits, the advantages and temptations of lending prompted financial innovations from margin investing and adjustable-rate mortgages to credit cards and microlending.In Beggar Thy Neighbor, financial historian Charles R. Geisst tracks the changing perceptions of usury and debt from the time of Cicero to the most recent financial crises. This comprehensive economic history looks at humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit. Beggar Thy Neighbor examines the major debt revolutions of the past, demonstrating that extensive leverage and debt were behind most financial market crashes from the Renaissance to the present day. Geisst argues that usury prohibitions, as part of the natural law tradition in Western and Islamic societies, continue to play a key role in banking regulation despite modern advances in finance. From the Roman Empire to the recent Dodd-Frank financial reforms, usury ceilings still occupy a central place in notions of free markets and economic justice.
eBook
Beggar Thy Neighbor
Biographical note: Charles R. Geisst is Ambassador Charles A. Gargano Professor of Finance at Manhattan College and the author of eighteen other books, including Collateral Damaged: The Marketing of Consumer Debt to America and Wall Street: A History.
Publication
Bankrupts and usurers of imperial Russia : debt, property, and the law in the age of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
\"Bankrupts and Usurers of Imperial Russia explores the culture of money and credit in imperial Russia through the eyes of ordinary individuals. Moving beyond the stereotypes of wasteful nobles, backward merchants, and ruthless moneylenders, this study recreates the daily tangle of motivations, practices, and disputes that preceded and underpinned Russia's \"great reforms\" of the mid-nineteenth century. Sergei Antonov uses close readings of previously unexamined legal cases to argue that Russian courts, despite their many shortcomings, provided a reasonably efficient forum for defining, promoting, and protecting private property interests. At the same time, debt cases reveal beliefs and attitudes shared by members of various classes and legal estates into which Russia's population was officially divided, and indicate the existence of a single, although amorphous, propertied class previously assumed to be absent in pre-revolutionary Russia\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Loan Sharks
Predatory lending: A problem rooted in the past that continues today.Looking for an investment return that could exceed 500 percent annually; maybe even twice that much? Private, unregulated lending to high-risk borrowers is the answer, or at least it was in the United States for much of the period from the Civil War to the onset of the Great Depression. Newspapers called the practice \"loan sharking\" because lenders employed the same ruthlessness as the great predators in the ocean. State and federal governments finally adopted laws and regulations curtailing the practice, but organized crime took over much of the business. Lending to high-margin investors contributed directly to the Wall Street crash of 1929.Loan Sharksis the first history of predatory lending in the United States. It traces the origins of modern consumer lending to such older practices as salary buying and hidden interest charges. Yet, as Geisst shows, no-holds-barred loan sharking is not a thing of the past. Many current lending practices employed today by credit card companies, payday lenders, and providers of consumer loans would have been easily recognizable at the end of the nineteenth century. Geisst demonstrates the still prevalent practice of lenders charging high interest rates, especially to risky borrowers, despite attempts to control the practice by individual states. Usury and loan sharking have not disappeared a century-and-a-half after the predatory practices first raised public concern.
eBook
Beggar Thy Neighbor
From the Roman Empire to the most recent financial crisis, this comprehensive economic history examines humanity's attempts to curb the abuse of debt while reaping the benefits of credit.
Electronic Resource
City of debtors : a century of fringe finance
Since the rise of the small-sum lending industry in the 1890s, people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in the United States have been asked to pay the greatest price for credit. Again and again, Americans have asked why the most fragile borrowers face the highest costs for access to the smallest loans. To protect low-wage workers in need of credit, reformers have repeatedly turned to law, only to face the vexing question of where to draw the line between necessary protection and overreaching paternalism. City of Debtors shows how each generation of Americans has tackled the problem of fringe finance, using law to redefine the meaning of justice within capitalism for those on the economic margins. Anne Fleming tells the story of the small-sum lending industry's growth and regulation from the ground up, following the people who navigated the market for small loans and those who shaped its development at the state and local level. Fleming's focus on the city and state of New York, which served as incubators for numerous lending reforms that later spread throughout the nation, differentiates her approach from work that has centered on federal regulation. It also reveals the overlooked challenges of governing a modern financial industry within a federalist framework. Fleming's detailed work contributes to the broader and ongoing debate about the meaning of justice within capitalistic societies, by exploring the fault line in the landscape of capitalism where poverty, the welfare state, and consumer credit converge.-- Provided by publisher
Book
Loan Sharks
Predatory lending: A problem rooted in the past that continues today. Looking for an investment return that could exceed 500 percent annually; maybe even twice that much? Private, unregulated lending to high-risk borrowers is the answer, or at least it was in the United States for much of the period from the Civil War to the onset of the early decades of the twentieth century. Newspapers called the practice loan sharking\" because lenders employed the same ruthlessness as the great predators in the ocean. Slowly state and federal governments adopted laws and regulations curtailing the practice, but organized crime continued to operate much of the business. In the end, lending to high-margin investors contributed directly to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Loan Sharks is the first history of predatory lending in the United States. It traces the origins of modern consumer lending to such older practices as salary buying and hidden interest charges. Yet, as Geisst shows, no-holds barred loan sharking is not a thing of the past. Many current lending practices employed today by credit card companies, payday lenders, and providers of consumer loans would have been easily recognizable at the end of the nineteenth century. Geisst demonstrates the still prevalent custom of lenders charging high interest rates, especially to risky borrowers, despite attempts to control the practice by individual states. Usury and loan sharking have not disappeared a century and a half after the predatory practices first raised public concern
Publication