Weekend Economists Examine the Root of All Evil: February 28-March 2, 2014

[Democracyinkind]

2. Calvin was an evil bastard, IMHO.

Though I am quite fond of Geneva. I once saw Grace Mugabe buying shoes there.

Calvin expressed himself on usury in a 1545 letter to a friend, Claude de Sachin, in which he criticized the use of certain passages of scripture invoked by people opposed to the charging of interest. He reinterpreted some of these passages, and suggested that others of them had been rendered irrelevant by changed conditions. He also dismissed the argument (based upon the writings of Aristotle) that it is wrong to charge interest for money because money itself is barren. He said that the walls and the roof of a house are barren, too, but it is permissible to charge someone for allowing him to use them. In the same way, money can be made fruitful.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

The truth, as always, is a bit more complicated: He also doted on our duties to the poor and needy and he was a 5-percenter as far as usury was concerned. But open the floodgates he did.