Transforming usury into finance

Financialization and the ethics of debt

Bibliographic Data

ID4495174
AuthorsKate Padgett Walsh (0000-0002-5215-6475, Iowa State University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume4
Issue1
Pages41-59
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFinance and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2059-5999 • E-ISSN: 2059-5999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2218/finsoc.v4i1.2739
OpenAlexW2807609776
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited29

This article examines the conceptual transformation of what was once considered usury into finance. To counter traditional arguments that usury was exploitative and unnatural, early modern theorists reconceptualized debt as a form of investment for both borrowers and lenders. Today, this ethical justification of debt as an investment underlies the rhetoric of finance and financialization. Close examination of the realities of contemporary financialized debt, however, reveal that much of this rhetoric is misleading and false. While the rhetoric of finance is unrelentingly oriented toward the future, the lived reality of debt is one of being constrained and haunted by the past. Relatedly, this rhetoric exhorts borrowing for investment, while finance has actually had the opposite effect of making consumer debt a necessity for the majority of Americans. Taken together, these realities of debt today contradict the rhetoric of finance as investment and undermine the ethical framework on which it depends

Debt · Economics · Financialization · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Usury · Economic Theory and Policy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Philosophy · University Challenges and Reforms · Finance

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