Usury (/yoo͞′zhə-rē/) noun: An excessive or illegally high rate of interest charged on borrowed money.
I’m imagining a movie where a desperate guy goes to the smoky back room of a bar. There’s a seedy looking character sitting behind a desk and two muscle types flanking him. The guy behind the desk hands the desperate guy a thick envelope. “Remember,” he says. “You’re borrowing ten grand from me at 25% interest. You pay me back $12,500 or…” (looks at the two goons) “…these guys will help you find it.” Desperate guy flees.
OK, admittedly an oversimplification. But it’s essentially how the credit card companies are permitted to operate.
These are tough times. Inflation is destroying the purchasing power of the dollar. People are barely able to make ends meet, many are living paycheck to paycheck. All it takes is one hiccup to send them down an irrecoverable path of financial ruin. An expensive car repair. A busted water heater. A roof leak.
So they put it on plastic. And the fine folks at VISA or Discover…like the loan shark…are glad to lend them money at ridiculously high rates. Soon, they’re only able to make the minimum payment while every month, the balance grows and grows. Maybe the next step is homelessness.
I understand the banks are not non-profits and their shareholders expect them to show a healthy bottom line.
But when the best you can get on CDs and money market accounts is around 5%…yet the banks are allowed to charge 5x more…seems like a rigged game to me.
And if there’s nowhere else to turn…well, no wonder so many people are one step away from living in a tent.
My little corner of the world 
An excellent choice. For all the criticism organized religion gets, the Catholic church outlawed ursury for centuries. Now even wikipedia has changed the definition to meaning charging too high an interest rate instead of ANY interest rate. Guess we can thank the Medici family and later corporations for undoing that prohibition.
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