interesting Talmudic claim but no explanation, can you comment?

[zachor_ve_kavod]

From JTA:

Rabbis tell Time that the Talmud would have spared us from this ecnomic mess
Uncategorized Add comments A rabbi from Yeshiva University and a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary — the flagship institutions of modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism, respectively, told Time magazine that if bankers and Wall Streeters had held by the rules of the Talmud, none of this economic jibber-jabber would have happened.

Rabbi Aaron Levine, chair of the economics department at Y.U., and Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, assert that rabbinical law would have prevented many of the shenanigans that got us into this mess.

[endquote]

I wish they had elaborated.  Do you have any idea why they made this claim?

[muman613]

From JTA:

Rabbis tell Time that the Talmud would have spared us from this ecnomic mess
Uncategorized Add comments A rabbi from Yeshiva University and a rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary — the flagship institutions of modern Orthodoxy and Conservative Judaism, respectively, told Time magazine that if bankers and Wall Streeters had held by the rules of the Talmud, none of this economic jibber-jabber would have happened.

Rabbi Aaron Levine, chair of the economics department at Y.U., and Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS, assert that rabbinical law would have prevented many of the shenanigans that got us into this mess.

I wish they had elaborated.  Do you have any idea why they made this claim?

I have no idea what they are talking about. It is obvious from Torah that we are not to make loans with interest. There are also the laws of Schmitta, which last year was a Schmitta year, during which we return things back to their original owners. I dont know if these rabbis are talking about Schmitta or not...

muman613

http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/258,2175108/What-is-Shmittah.html
Shmittah is the original Sabbatical.

The Torah1 tells us "for six years you shall plant your fields... but in the seventh year the land should have complete rest, a Shabbat to G-d".

G-d created the world and then created man to maintain and perfect it. Progress and production is a partnership between G-d and mankind. G-d provides the raw materials, mankind works, and then G-d blesses his effort.

In a physical world caught up in materialism Man's work is quite evident, but in the rush and race for survival G-d's involvement often gets overlooked.

Unless we make an effort to focus. To stop, step aside, and set a time for observation and introspection. Thus Shmittah is to agriculture what Shabbat is to the working life: a G-dly devised reminder of what it’s all really about.

Every seventh day, we reorient: Shabbat. And every seventh year, we reaffirm: Shmittah.

Like Shabbat, Shmittah is a Divine mandate for obligated rest, which follows a universal cycle. On the designated Shabbat day we retreat from work, and during the designated Shmittah year we retreat from our fields.2

The Torah3 tells us that if we observe the Shmittah properly G-d will bless the efforts of the sixth year, resulting in enough produce for the next three years.

See also When is Shmittah? and How is Shmittah observed?