“Clearly, the power of the lender to command interest has nothing to do with the use to which the loan is put. Whether the borrower uses it to build a factory or acquire a dwelling house, whether he spends it on tools of his trade or gambling on horses, will make no difference… The coupling of interest with capital has been an unfortunate error prolific in its progeny of falsehoods. It arises from confusing the power to exact payment for loans with the use to which some of the loans are put… It gives to the idea of a loan a quality it should not possess, a suggestion of productiveness and of social benefit, obscuring the indebtedness and dependence which the loan so plainly advertises.”

— Leon MacLaren

Leon MacLaren, Nature of Society and Other Essays, p169

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Leon MacLaren 10

British philosopher 1910–1994

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Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

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Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

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Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

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ME 13:277
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“Protocols: What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a foreign loan? A loan is an issue of government bills of exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the sum of the loan capital. If the loan bears a charge of 5 percent, then in twenty years the State vainly pays away in interest a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in forty years it is paying a double sum, in sixty treble and all the while the debt remains an unpaid debt.
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Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Surely they must have changed during all that time.
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