Another Reason Why I Like Orthodox Jews

All loans are charitable events.  If interest is involved (usury), then it becomes morally criminal, although perfectly legal.  Now keep in mind when these fellows say usury, they mean any rate on any amount for any period of time.  No such thing as excess interest rates, it is all criminal.

Jewish and Islamic law have something in common when it comes to borrowing and lending with interest. “Lending with interest is one of the gravest transgressions in the Torah, and therefore, one of the greatest mitzvoth [good deeds] is lending without interest,” Rabbi Abraham Fine, from the Court for Interest in Jerusalem, explained to Al-Monitor. Similarly, Ibrahim Salma, imam of the Ajami Mosque in Jaffa, told Al-Monitor, “In Sharia, interest is a grave sin, and a Muslim must not pay or receive interest, even a pittance.”

If you stick to this simple compliance with moral and religious law, then you can have sound banking, which is possible in Israel, although maybe not for long.

The ultra-Orthodox loan societies point to the advantages of strong community. They are outstanding examples of how a unique banking system can benefit society while operating in the real world. What the ultra-Orthodox have discovered is that the real problem today is not the high cost of weddings, but the intolerable interest rates charged by banks and other lenders, who jack up loan costs significantly. So far, the State of Israel has allowed these alternative ultra-Orthodox banks to operate without any problems, even though their activities are unregulated. While there have been attempts over the past few years to impose regulations, the Bank of Israel, the country's central bank, has delayed the process.

Note they say these banks are not regulated.  Correct.  Morally correct banking needs no regulation, another reason I recommend deregulating banking.  These morally correct banks would be a threat to the  morally criminal banks, and therefore if they grew they would need to be regulated out of existence.

Beal Bank was prosecuted by the Feds for not engaging in the morally criminal acts of the other banks back in the mid-2000s.  For the Hegemon, it is not enough for you to decline to do wrong, you must actively engage in wrongdoing if you want to keep your license to work.

By coincidence, before I posted this, I received this from Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

(O)ver the past fifty years most of my fellow Jews have ... tried to help their fellow Americans escape poverty by means quite different from those they employed in their own journey from poverty to prosperity.  Not only do they fail to share their methods, they promote a political panacea almost guaranteed to perpetuate dependency and hopelessness.
...
In 1968 the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a group rooted in rejection of traditional Judaism in favor of modern, man-centered wisdom, proclaimed, “…American Jews are products of the welfare-oriented civilization of Judaism,” in its efforts to promote welfare and other federal social programs.
That, quite simply, is a lie.  Had Judaism really been “welfare-oriented” Jews would never have achieved the independent financial power that, despite persecution, we gained in most countries.  Instead, we would, quite logically, have remained on welfare. The U.A.H.C was just plain wrong.

I don't have a dog in that fight, but I can see the point of the UAHC.  Yes, it is a slight of hand to switch from what is described in the articles above to state intervention.  But it is an old mistake.  Another Rabbi noted that in 1 Samuel 8, when the Jews demanded a "king like the other peoples had" God could not give them what they wanted, because no other people had a God-given king.  When the UAHC recommended state welfare to the masses, like they had, well, state welfare is not what they had.  But the point is settled now.  State welfare is a disaster.  No better now than when Joseph urged it on Pharoah.

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