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The price paid for usury
By David James
What does it mean when the entire Western world, and Japan, are mired in system-wide usury? Over 95 per cent of the money in these systems is credit: debt with an interest rate on it.
The problem with this is simple arithmetic. Interest payments compound, increasing geometrically. Economic activity increases only linearly. Over time, as the economic historian Michael Hudson has documented extensively, debt-based financial systems break – something that has been happening for thousands of years.
Einstein described compound interest as the “eighth wonder of the world”. He should have said “one of the first banes of the world”.
"In a system in which most of the money is credit (debt), in order to pay the interest it becomes necessary to create more debt, which in turn increases the debt and the interest costs. The result is a downward spiral."
David James
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