55) If you make a mutuum loan to a friend in need, shouldn’t that friend try to keep you from losing any economic buying power in the process?
A lender of money can expect a recompense from a borrower in a second way as if the recompense is gratuitous and offered without obligation, not as if a debt
Suppose your best friend needs wheat and can’t afford to buy any. He doesn’t need paper: he needs wheat. You’ve got some excess wheat you could lend him, but you like the way paper futures (Question 46) look better, and you want a guarantee that you won’t lose any buying power (Question 54) when you are doing your best friend a favor.
So you lend him paper (even though he needs wheat, and is just going to exchange the paper for wheat) just so that, as a formality, the kind of thing he owes you back (Question 35) is paper. Or you tell him that you know he needs wheat and you have plenty to lend, but you like paper futures better so even though you’ll give him wheat you want him to repay the wheat you gave him by doing imaginary wheat-to-paper exchanges (they will be imaginary to avoid transaction fees and taxes) at the point of borrowing and repayment.
It seems to me that your friendship is as imaginary as the wheat-to-paper exchanges. That is no way to treat a friend in need. The former contract might not be technically usury, while the latter definitely is usury. But this fails to undermine the moral doctrine prohibiting usury, much as the fact that flirting heavily with your secretary is https://loansolution.com/pawn-shops-tx/ not technically adultery fails to undermine the moral doctrine prohibiting adultery.
And mutuum lending is only morally licit as an act of friendship or charity. It is not morally licit in pursuit of gain. Preservation of market buying power as something guaranteed by someone else is a kind of gain (Question 54). Continue reading And then the lender illicitly expects any such recompense