Enter the Queen of Sheba

Enter the Queen of Sheba
1 Kings 10:1-29

The news yesterday reported on one of the unbreakable rules of capitalism: whatever regulations are put in place to control capitalism, people will find a way around them. Interestingly, one of its examples was the Old Testament ban on lending at interest, which the church long affirmed. In the Middle Ages, traders found a way around it by arranging for loans to be paid back in a different currency from the one in which they were made. In the decade that led up to the great recession that we have been going through as I write, financiers have been finding their own way around the regulations that existed (which is one reason why we are in a mess), and we can be sure that as governments put in new controls in the aftermath of a recession, they will do so again. In one sense there are no rules of economics. In another sense, this is one such rule.