I've just read the first few paragraphs of the "badlands" link. Before I started reading it, I was wondering how the whole ball got rolling - how did a not-royal, non-land owning person in that time period get so much money that he was able to start loaning it out with interest? You'd have to have a large amount of money to start because you wouldn't want to put your own lifestyle at risk (if people didn't pay you back). And there it was, just a few paragraphs down - embezzlement.

Imagine my shock at seeing a banking system based on crime. /sarcasm