The best two sentences I read this morning

Charge 80% per year on a loan in the U.S. and you’re called a usurer.  Charge 80% on a loan in Latin America or Africa and you can be a poverty-alleviation charity.

That is Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman, in today’s WSJ, "In Defense of Usury," p.A18.  Karlan and Zinman discuss their study showing that micro-credit borrowers in South Africa are better off for receiving the money, even when they pay very high interest rates.