Normalization isn’t a new phenomenon, and neither is the cat-and-mouse game between hackers and regulators. In the Middle Ages, both Catholic and secular authorities had very strict restrictions on interest-bearing loans because they were regarded as sinful. As banking developed as a profession, wealthy bankers avoided those restrictions through a series of increasingly sophisticated methods. This included fudging the record books, misleadingly classifying a prohibited usurious loan as a permitted one, and disguising the interest on a loan as a gift from the borrower. One hack was a “dry sea
...more
