Keynes’s liquidity preference and the usury doctrine: their connection and continuing policy relevance

The purpose of this paper is to support the spirit of the early medieval prohibition of payment for the use of money, with arguments based on the economics of Keynes. At the heart of the usury doctrine is the idea that a creditor cannot expect both the security of a claim on a fixed sum of money and to derive an income from it; security comes at a price, one way or another. The consequences of the unwillingness of modern society to accept this are illustrated by reference to two problems of the modern international financial and monetary system: bank bailouts and the lack of a supranational reserve currency.