Jay Michaelson surveys the Bible’s prohibitions against usury and call’s today’s financial regulation “nothing more than an update of the ancient prohibitions on usury, or the unfair charging of interest.”
Today’s derivatives market, for example, is precisely about “making money from money” — but taken to new and ludicrous extremes. The credit default swaps which were largely [...]

The Salt Lake Tribune reports on the religious debate: should responsible taxpayers who took out affordable mortgages bail out those who didn’t?
Is it ethical for others to foot the bill for your bad financial decisions? And is it ethical to say no to those pleas for help?
The article quotes Mu Soeng, a Buddhist studies [...]

In his Washington Post/On Faith column, “Our Brothers’ Keepers, Not their Guarantors,” Rabbi Brad Hirschfield cites the Cain and Abel story to support bailing out even those who behaved irresponsibly, offering a different take than this famous TV clip arguing the government’s subsidy of “losers’ mortgages” promotes bad behavior.
When God asks him where his brother is, Cain [...]

>>>Is the economy starting to impact churches? Tithing and church employees affected.
>>>Owen Bandy writes about the Bible’s take on loans and debt. He compares the enormous U.S. credit card debt to “a big government-approved corporate pyramid scheme in which more than 60 million American citizens are enslaved.” He writes: “The truth is, even though the politicians [...]