ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about Usury and abusury. The Hume-Anscombe argument is that usury is overall a good institution, since it allows idle money to be put to good use: those who are holding it and not using it can loan it out to those who will use it. The concept of usury overlooks much of the moral ambivalence revealed by history. Sometimes usury does allow for idle savings to be put to good uses. The intuitive appeal of the Hume-Anscombe argument lies in the obvious truth that it is better for something to be borrowed and used than it is for it to go to waste. Perhaps the point would have been clearer had they called it abusury. The famous early modern defenders of usury like Turgot and Bentham made no defence of abusury; as their argument depends upon the empirical claim that social and institutional changes had come close to eradicating it and replacing it with usury.
