In the old days there was no paper money. The accepted token of
exchange was precious metal minted into coins by the Church and the
Crown. Because there was only a limited amount of gold and silver
available, the economic life of the nation had a certain regularity.

An even greater restriction existed throughout Christendom. This was
the prohibition against usury, or charging interest. The Church held it
to be a grave sin and the code was upheld by the civil powers. There
were harsh penalties for those who broke the law.

The regulation of usury was to prevent the separation of money from
reality. Money is not a good, it is a measure. It is fraud to pretend
otherwise, and constitutes theft. Usury is making money from lending
money; it is making money from nothing. This is exactly what is
happening today on a colossal scale.

Lending money is NOT "making money from nothing". An informed
borrower is willing to pay the interest and may find it enormously
to his financial advantage to borrow (e.g. loans for a house or a
college education). A lender should be compensated for his risk
in possibly not getting paid back, and the opportunity cost of not
being able to use it for something else profitable. It can be a
win-win deal.

Fractional-reserve banking and government deficit spending are
arguably "creating money from nothing". But anyone who doesn't
know about fractional-reserve banking nowadays simply isn't paying
attention. It's not a secret and I learned about it in Social
Studies class.