OpEdNews - Page 9 of Article: "Looting of America" Author Sees Opportunity in Meltdown

DS: Well, of course.

LL: We need transparency. That's a good thing.

DS: The other one – there are a number of bills, and the strongest one may be Sen. Bernie Sanders' bill, but on the question of usury, of, you know, traditions that date back for millennia, of not allowing lenders to lend at exorbitant rates. And Sen. Sanders' bill would cap the interest rates on credit cards and so forth at 15 percent. Now, I don't know . . . there may be some argument out there that people can only do good business if they can charge 20 or 30 or 500 percent interest, but I, I don't grasp that. What do you think of those sorts of . . .

LL: Give it at try. I mean, at this point, it seems to me all the free market arguments, there are dozens of free market arguments I believe that would say why it is that you shouldn't cap interest rates.

DS: But they were in the past, right? We have tried it and it worked better?

LL: Well, nothing has worked worse than what we just went through.

DS: Yes.

LL: So, I'm for, again, I think the burden of proof goes the other way. I say, "Try it." The argument is going to be, you know, credit will dry up, etc. I go, "So what?" Credit will dry up, you know, consumer credit, predatory consumer credit will dry up a little bit more.

I'm with Bernie on this when I say, "Give it a shot." There is a long history. This history is 5,000 years old and then some about how to deal with basically predatory lending, you know, high usury. It's been an issue for 5,000 years. It's very, very difficult. Doesn't seem to go away. So I think it's a very good period in which to experiment.

You don't get these opportunities that often. I feel like I've been unshackled from sort of an ideological post that had both my arms wrapped around it and tied behind my back. You know, you couldn't, the free market was, you know, in finance with miracle workers, you know, the people that were making all this money were donating it here and there and were viewed as gods. You know, you're supposed to, like, you know, worship them. And it turns out that what they were doing was running a high class casino that went bust. And now we can talk about what really went on which is those markets don't work that way, so if we want to try to put a cap on interest rates, usurious interest rates, let's give it a shot.

DS: Well, that is a wonderful, optimistic note to end on the account of what does not seem a very optimistic story, and so I think it's wonderful to see this as a time of hope for more fundamental change. And I think this story is told as well as I've seen it anywhere else in the book of our guest.

We've been speaking with Les Leopold. The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity and What We Can Do About It from Chelsea Green Publishing and you can get it anywhere online or at your local book stores.

Les, thank you very much for taking so much time with us.

LL: Oh, it's my pleasure and thank you for all the wonderful work you're doing. You're a terrific writer and commentator and I wish you all the best.

DS: Thanks for that.

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