"Jewish bankers": the centuries old trope

Editor's note: First things first. Why is BlackRock with Larry Fink (read the comments) at the head of who was at the G7 summit telling the heads of governments what they must do in order to financially survive? BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager and a major investor in sovereign debt (government bonds) on behalf of its clients. Fink's BlackRock has been buying gold while at the same time showing more interest in bitcoin. There are news stories appearing suggesting BlackRock is buying gold in large quantities so that governments will be forced to go to BlackRock for loans. This is not true. Gold is a central bankers' trick and they use it when the central bankers' deflate the economy. Where is most gold stored and who controls it? Bankers do in their vaults. About 17 to 20 percent of all gold mined. Who controls the media and politicians that tell you that you now need gold? The central bankers do. Then we come to President Trump's decision to drop bombs on Iran mentioned in this article. Did Trump make that decision to sabotage Israel? 

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Trump's Shylock: The Illiterate Meets the Caricature

Is Trump anti-Judaic or just a historical illiterate? John Podhoretz has the answer

By Michael Hoffman | July 5, 2025

"Think of that: No death tax. No estate tax. No going to the banks and borrowing from, in some cases, a fine banker — and in some cases, Shylocks and bad people." —The President of the United States, Iowa State Fairgrounds, Des Moines, July 3.

"Trump criticized for using antisemitic slurs in Iowa speech." — ABC News, July 4.

"Jewish Leaders Denounce Trump's Use of Centuries-Old Trope." — New York Times, July 4.

'Troubling, irresponsible': Trump criticized for talk of banker 'Shylocks."—Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), July 4.

Representative Jerry Nadler said the word was "one of the most recognizable antisemitic slurs in the English language."

Representative Dan Goldman stated, "This is blatant and vile antisemitism, and Trump knows exactly what he's doing."

The Anti‑Defamation League (ADL) termed Trump's statement "very troubling and irresponsible," noting the term is a "centuries‑old antisemitic trope," while the Jewish Council for Public Affairs said the use of Shylock "is not an accident" and "deeply dangerous."

Republican Idaho is a usurer's utopia and it has nothing to do with the Judaic Shylock character in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Idaho does not cap interest rates on most loans. It allows payday lenders and title lenders to charge triple-digit annual percentage rates (APRs). According to recent data from the state itself and watchdog reports, APRs on small-dollar loans in Idaho exceed 500%, with an ungodly Mafia-rate of predation of 652% reported in some cases! Bulletin: both the Mafia and the Idaho legislature are majority gentile.

In the early modern era "Jews" were largely absent from the big usury deals. The key players in the rise of usury banking were the Catholic financial houses of Fugger and Medici in conspiracy with Medici Pope Leo X.

Decades later, Protestant founder John Calvin endorsed the swindle, predicated on the "equity" he learned as a Catholic youth in the University of Orleans, a papally-chartered French law school of significant repute, from which he graduated in 1531.

After he became a Protestant, Calvin wrote that it is the law of equity (lex aequitatis) that best describes "how far it may be lawful to receive interest upon loans."

Calvin, the supposed supreme Biblicist, wrote:

"…if we would form an equitable judgment, reason does not suffer us to admit that all usury is to be condemned without exception…only those unjust exactions are condemned whereby the creditor, losing' sight of equity, burdens and oppresses his debtor….It is abundantly clear that the ancient people were prohibited from usury, but we must needs confess that this was a part of their political constitution. Hence it follows, that usury is not now unlawful, except in so far as it contravenes equity…" (cf. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, Arranged in the form of a Harmony [1554]; and Guenther H. Haas, The Concept of Equity in Calvin's Ethics [1997, pp. 119-121).

One of the principal elements of stage magic is distraction. Renting money at any rate of interest was a shameful thing in the eyes of the majority of Catholics and many Protestants in the 16th century. Therefore the non-Jewish banking cartel staged a distraction early in that time, producing a play in Italy, Il Pecorone ("The Simpleton"), in which money is borrowed from a Judaic banker enforced with the threat of a pound of flesh to be cut out of the debtor were he to fail to meet his obligation to the Judaic banker.

Financiers of Judaic background were few and far between in that era; they were minor players compared with the Vatican's inaugural bankers. Shakespeare appears to have learned of Il Pecorone as it circulated in translation in manuscript form, and plagiarized it in his own "Merchant of Venice."

William Shakespeare was a propagandist for Christendom's bankers, absolving them of the stigma of usury by scapegoating a Judean. He did something similar in "Richard III" when he acted as a Tudor propagandist to curry favor with Tudor Queen Elizabeth I by portraying the last Plantagenet Catholic monarch in England as a vile fiend, when he was no such thing.

Don't misunderstand me. As a work of art without reference to history, "The Merchant of Venice," like so much of the playwright's canon, is a soaring prose poem of wisdom and insight. The confrontation between Shylock and Portia is universal in the sense that it reframes the eternal struggle between avarice and charity, and the tension between calls for justice and demands for mercy. When the audience sees in the person of Shylock every usury banker of any ethnicity—and any or no religion—a universal lesson for the ages is conveyed.

Please go to Michael Hoffman's substack to continue reading.