Lee & Parrish in Today's NY Times

In today's New York Times (reg. req'd), Judge Joe Lee and author Thomas Parrish have an op-ed entitled, "Banks Gone Wild." This passage gives a flavor of the piece:

"As for the morality involved in lending money at exorbitant rates, the word 'usury' itself has taken on a quaint, archaic sound, like 'jousting' or 'necromancy.' What happened?"

If you're interested in the sorts of things we talk about on Credit Slips, you will want to read the entire op-ed.

Judge Lee has been a federal bankruptcy judge since 1961 and is a well-respected judge (see here for an announcement about Judge Lee being named to receive the William B. Norton, Jr., Award for Judicial Excellence). He is precisely the type of person with precisely the type of experience to whom Congress should be listening but isn't. I'm sorry to say that I don't know Mr. Parrish, but I'll try to make amends by linking to his Amazon.com author page with his eclectic list of publications. His Grouchy Grammarian book looks interesting. Maybe I need to consider a book called the Grouchy Law Professor, or is that redundant?