Usury
Usury (from the Latin usus meaning "used") was defined originally as charging a fee for the use of money. This usually meant interest on loans, although charging a fee for changing money (as at a Bureau de change) is included in the original meaning. After moderate-interest loans became an accepted part of the business world in the early modern age, the word has come to refer specifically to charging very high interest on loans.Usury laws are state laws that specify the maximum legal interest rate at which loans can be made. This makes most loansharking, another name for usury, illegal. Often, loansharks use illegal "scare" tactics to ensure that the lent money is paid back.
Usury is scriptually and doctrinally forbidden in many religions. Judaism forbids a Jew to lend at interest to another Jew. It's forbidden in Islam. The most recent Catholic teaching on usury is by Pope Benedict XIV in his Vix Pervenit from 1745 which strictly forbids the practice, though many Jews, Catholics and Muslims break their own laws in this matter.
The usury committed by Jews, both real and imagined, was used as an excuse to take their possessions and punish them throughout the history of Christianity.
Usury has been denounced by almost every major spiritual leader and philosopher of the past three thousand years. Plato, Aristotle, Cato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Aquinas, Jesus, Mohammed and Moses are just a few.
Cato in his De Re Rustica said:
"And what do you think of usury?"
"What do you think of murder?"