“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole. The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.” (Karl Marx)

If usury is a sin, I guess we're all in serious trouble. Ok, the concept of usury pre-dates our modern understanding of inflation. Inflation being the governments way of taxing the rich, albeit only a small fraction of the sorts of tax that the rest of us pay. So the rich should therefore have a way to beat inflation so as not to be paying even that fundamentally unbeatable tax. So we have lending. Oooh lending. Oh so many great and wonderful things have been accomplished over the past 6 months because of lending.

If you would like to get involved with this morally destitute act, lend to me! I'll be sure to lend it to someone else, like a mini Bear Stearns... no a mini UBS Corp... no. hm. well, someone who seeks to profit off of the use of money anyway.

I suppose it's a much better way to rob the poor than investing in mutual funds. For a real downer, check your Fidelity retirement account against these companies.

Ok, on to my Prosper Listing... oh and sign up through this link before lending to me and I think we each get $25! Actually, lending under the right circumstances isn't quite so bad. Such as when someone can afford the loan, and they are in a situation that justifies it.