Early this month, there was a small story in a local paper in upstate New York about the arrests at a local bar for alleged sale of drugs, along with a charge against the bartender for �acting as a loan shark.�

The formal charge for the �loan shark� is usury and it was jarring to learn that he was charged with usury for �lending money at an interest rate above 25 percent.� We�ve become accustomed to busts for selling drugs everywhere, from inner cities to the smallest rural hamlet, but a charge of usury is not something that comes along every day.

Usury is generally defined as the practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate. We�ll ignore for the time being that most religions have prohibited the charging of interest, going back in the mists of time.

Mostly, though, religions have come to accept the levying of some interest on loans, as the practice of making money without doing any work has become more common in the modern era.

So, in the Mohawk Valley of New York, the police are going after the �loan guppies,� while letting actual loan sharks off the hook, so to speak. What does that mean?

Well, for starters, there are the credit card companies, which have been charging as much as 29.9 percent to those who have had the misfortune to miss a payment or have been late in making a payment - even a day or two. Nobody charges them with usury, even though credit card companies have been allowed to raise the interest rates of their customers at any time.

Now, there is something called credit card �reform,� but that reform is much like some other reforms that have been made in recent years: It looks good on paper, but in the end, the credit card companies (in many cases, they are banks) are still in charge. With the new law, they have to notify their customers of any rate increase, but there is no limit on those increases. And, what is not considered part of the usurious practices are the fees that they can charge for little reason or, in many cases, no reason at all.

Debit cards are another matter. Although banks may not charge interest on the use of the debit card, they have a way of charging fees that serve the same purpose. If you write a check, there is not usually a per-check charge, but a fee is charged for each debit card transaction - charged for using your own money.

These fees for either kind of card are not interest, but they serve the same function. Since they�re not interest, the bank can collect $10 or $20 or more several times a year from each card-holder. Because so many Americans carry such a large load of credit card debt, most of them don�t even notice the fees. They just keep making the minimum payment and maybe a little more.

This kind of behavior by credit care companies drives up the cost of using a credit card, whether it�s called interest or something else. By the time all of this is calculated into the cost of using a credit card, it can be well into the 30 percent or 40 percent range.

Historians note that the founders of this nation capped interest rates at 6 percent and usury was illegal until 1978. This was the time of the �great deregulation.� Like the trucking and other industries, restraints on financial institutions became more and more lax. By 2010, there didn�t appear to be any restraints on usurious behavior. A credit card company that has two million customers can get themselves tens of millions, simply by charging a random $10 fee to a few hundred thousand customers at a time.

There have been few CEOs of credit card companies arrested on usury charges in recent memory.

One of the worst examples of usurious behavior is the so-called �payday loan� business. Instead of cruising the streets in a large car with tinted windows, these people have opened storefronts to conduct their business.

Ten percent doesn�t sound like so much of a burden of interest, unless it is expressed on an annual basis. Paying 10 percent on a $300 paycheck doesn�t sound excessive, unless you realize that it may only be for one or two weeks. If you calculate how much that would be if that amount borrowed over a year, at that rate, it would come to between 300 percent and 400 percent.

It�s the same for such enterprises as �rapid refund� on income taxes. These sharks take a chunk of the refund, to provide a check a few months before it would come from the IRS. That�s a lot of money, on an annual basis. Forbes.com reported last February that, in one instance, the interest charged was 82 percent, figured on an annual basis and, in some instances, it much more.

There are few reports that these bottom-feeders have been arrested for usury anywhere in the country. Rather, the sympathetic authorities make an attempt to �regulate� this kind of unethical (many would say criminal) behavior.

Payday loan businesses over many years proliferated around military bases, charging the same rates of interest, 300-400 percent. Probably only because military personnel were the ones being made victims of these scam �loans,� there has been some action. Now, these people are allowed to charge �only� 36 percent.

But, the same outfits are functioning in big cities and still charging the same 300-400 percent interest, on the basis that they provide �a service� to people �who have little access to credit.� The people continue to pay the price.

None of those business managers have been arrested for usury. In fact, they are indicative of practices that occur at the highest levels of the American economy and society, yet, no one is ever charged with usury. Rather, it�s whatever the traffic will bear.

Since poor people and people of little means have no other resources, they continue to use the services of the �loan� companies - and lose a large percentage of their income in the process.

It is unclear whether the usury charge in the recent bar bust was because it was accompanied by drug charges or whether this signals that law enforcement authorities in the U.S. are starting a move to shut down usurious businesses.

If the latter is the case, we should expect to soon see photos in the tabloids of �perps� in $1,200 suits and $100 ties being walked in handcuffs out of the skyscrapers of Wall Street and other locations for their daily crimes of usury.

If that isn�t the case, we can expect to see - at least occasionally - a small news report of the arrest of yet another �loan guppy,� while the sharks slip away. Not much changes. Regular folks pay, in both commerce and in the courts, while the rich rake it in from the former, and get a free pass in the latter. We should try for a little equity, once in a while.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.