>Why is it that the American
>borrowers seem not to be daunted by five and a half percent interest rates
>and the Japanese find two and a half percent too dear?
"The monetary system is essentially Catholic, the credit system essentially Protestant. 'The Scotch hate gold.' As paper, the monetary existence of commodities has a purely social existence. It is faith that brings salvation. Faith in money value as the immanent spirit of commodities, faith in the mode of production and its predestined disposition, faith in the individual agents of production as mere personifications of self-valorizing capital. But the credit system is no more emancipated from the monetary system as its basis than Protestantism is from the foundations of Catholicism."
- Marx, Capital vol. 3 (p. 727 in the Vintage edition)