The Germans have reduced it by inflation to pretty well nothing, which is the same really as repudiating the debt altogether. So what we see in a general survey is this:-- 1. Usury is both wrong morally and bad for society, _because it is the claim for an increase of wealth which is not really present at all_. It is trying to get something where there is nothing out of which that something can be paid. 2. This action must therefore progressively and increasingly soak up the wealth which men produce into the hands of those who lend money, until at last all the wealth is so soaked up and the process comes to an end. 3. That is what has happened in the case of the modern world, largely through unproductive expenditure on war, which expenditure has been met by borrowing money _and promising interest upon it although the money was not producing any further wealth_. 4. The modern world has therefore reached a limit in this process and the future of usurious investment is in doubt. Though these conclusions are perfectly clear, it is unfortunately not possible to say that this or that is a way out of our difficulties; that by this or that law we can stop usury in the future and can go back to healthier conditions. Trade is still spread all over the world. It is still impersonal and money continues to be lent out at interest unproductively, with the recurring necessity of repaying the debt and failing to keep up payments which have been promised. Things will not get right again in this respect until society becomes as simple as it used to be, and we shall have to go through a pretty bad time before we get back to that. ECONOMIC IMAGINARIES I am going to end with a rather difficult subject on which I hesitated whether I should put it into this book or no. If you find it too difficult leave it out; but if you find as you read that you can understand it it is worth going into, because it is quite new (you will not find it in any other book), and it is very useful in helping one to understand certain difficult problems which have arisen in our modern society and which have become a danger to-day. This subject is what I call “Economic Imaginaries.” An imaginary is a term taken from mathematics, and means a value which appears on paper but has no real existence. It would be too long and much too puzzling to explain what imaginaries in mathematics are, but I can give you a very simple example of what they are in Economics. They mean economic values or lumps of wealth which appear on paper when you are making calculations, so that one would think the wealth was really there, but which when you go closely into their nature you find do not really exist.