No subject

in legal thinking, changing the names and forms of things but not their 
functions or essential characteristics. For instance, it is not clear to me 
what economic difference it makes if a mortgage generates profit through 
interest, called interest and recognized as such, or through the renting of 
a progressively smaller share of the house in question which is held in 
co-ownership until the debt is fully paid. The economic results are 
equivalent, and the juridical relation the same (a default leads to the same 
result). So as far as I can see it's a branding exercise to sell modern 
finance institutions to people. As to this idea that speculation and 
interest should be forbidden and only production should lead to greater 
capital, I think it is deeply misguided, and a futile attempt to impose an 
incompatible ideological superstructure over an economic basis which cannot 
support it. In conditions of private ownership of capital, capital owners 
will seek mechanisms to speculate and profit, it's the nature of the 
institution.

--David.