Economic virtuosity to the rescue

Catherine Rampell reviews a book by Jerry Z. Muller on a touchy subject: “Capitalism and the Jews.” Muller describes how Jewish culture adapted to the intellectually demanding tasks of the financial operations Jews alone were allowed to perform when dark superstitions prevented Christians from practicing usury and proto-banking. Occupying that niche brought Jews much prosperity, but also an even stronger resentment among the masses of gentiles as “Judaism became forever fused in the popular mind with finance.” Rampell says that, according to Muller, “much anti-Semitism can be attributed to a misunderstanding of basic economics,” that is, to the ancient delusion (which clouded even Adam Smith’s brain) that only real labor is really productive, and purely monetary transactions could not possibly produce added value. Rampell concludes the review with the following lament: “For centuries, poverty, paranoia and financial illiteracy have combined into a dangerous brew — one that has made economic virtuosity look suspiciously like social vice.” I guess this generalization should also apply to the current generation of equal-opportunity financial virtuosos who, driven by what some might call “greed,” set the global economy on fire – if you believe the conspiracy theories spun by a few populist bozos.