To make the case that changes across the capitalist world at the turn of the 21st century put into play a global financial system which operates as a reincarnation of ancient usury requires several key steps.
Chapter One, using broad brush strokes, introduces the problem.
Chapter Two takes the reader on a fascinating journey back into West European history to see antediluvian “loan capital” or usury in action as it helped to bring then civilization to the brink of collapse.
Chapter Three shows how capitalism chained Shylock as it reset finance and trade with socially redeeming purposes tied to the nexus of capitalist profit making and the social prosperity capitalism initially spreads.
Chapter Four follows the trail capitalism blazes as it increasingly forsakes its market operating principles for a welter of extra-economic, extra-capitalist supports to survive in the 20th century. Yet, notwithstanding these supports, what remains of capitalist substance drives advanced economies into crises.
Chapter Five exposes the big lie of the neoliberal era. It shows clearly why there is no longer any capitalism in the 21st century. Production centered economies are largely disintegrated with the activities which had acted as their engines of growth now disarticulated across the globe. What currently exists is a global network of casino economies with financial systems which operate not like capitalist markets, but like Merchants of Venice expropriating wealth through money games.
Chapter Six concludes with a closer look at how wealth is expropriated upwards to a cabal of über rich. It offers the disturbing prognosis that the current global trend of finance carving “pounds of flesh” from the bones of humanity is leading toward a new Dark Age of world barbarism.