American financial-banking capitalism has its unhealthy and unethical bases in the trade in African slaves on cotton plantations in the southern states, practiced intensively in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The very concept of mortgage credit was created on the occasion of this kind of trade. At that time, cotton was the most marketable raw material, and slaves (not agricultural land, railroads, or industrial facilities) were the most consistent American wealth. To produce more, farmers borrowed to buy more slaves, mortgaging slaves already owned. As a journalist, I do not want to trivialize, but it is even practiced to give or take the payment of mortgaged slaves. I don’t even want to shock and disturb some myths, but Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, mortgaged 150 slaves to buy more slaves to allow him to build Villa Monticello.
The American farmers of those times exploited the slaves physically and financially, for this continuous approach being essential the support of the new American banks and the contribution of the “old” world banks, from England, Holland, and France. With cynicism and consistent doses of Christian hypocrisy, huge bank profits were made on the backs of slaves.
The irony of the fate of libertarian and ultra-conservative economists is that the rules of this ruthless trade and brutally the legal principles of this unethical and anti-Christian type of banking are found. The foundations of this evil capitalism are immoral and contrary to Christian equity.