Get the Summary of Edward Chancellor's The Price of Time in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: In the beginning was the loan, and the loan carried interest. For at least five millennia people have been borrowing and lending at interest. The practice wasn't always popular—in the ancient world, usury was generally viewed as exploitative, a potential path to debt bondage and slavery. Yet as capitalism became established from the late Middle Ages onwards, denunciations of interest were tempered because interest was a necessary reward for lenders to part with their capital. And interest performs many other vital functions: it encourages people to save; enables them to place a value on precious assets, such as houses and all manner of financial securities; and allows us to price risk.

All economic and financial activities take place across time. Interest is often described as the "price of money," but it is better called the "price of time:" time is scarce, time has value, interest is the time value of money.