Actual money in possession (financial securities or other property conventionally used for exchange), or other property securing the loan, can be alienated from the borrower and repossessed if the borrower stops making census payments
30) If the sovereign should decline to enforce usurious contracts, doesn’t it follow that the sovereign should decline to enforce any contract of exchange whatsoever which empowers one party to pursue a deficiency judgment against the other party personally, independent of any real assets posted as security?
Yes. See questions 35 and 36. But in these kinds of cases the content of the contract itself is irrelevant: any extrinsic title that the wronged party has to damages in the case of negligence or crime is a title he has no matter what the contract says (see Question 49).
31) I really don’t get it. Why again do you say that fixed-income investments in (e.g.) corporations (corporate bonds) are not usury?
A (non-usurious) corporate bond is not secured by any personal guarantees: it is only secured by the corporation itself, which is an asset (something which can be owned and sold) not a person or persons. An example of a census is an investor paying for seed and supplies for a farmer in exchange for a fixed quota of the farm’s expected output, converted into a regular cash payment. Continue reading
