You're right that finance facilitates production. You just don't see the implications of that concept. You can't produce anything in a factory unless you first build the factory. Without finance and the capital improvements it provides, there would be no production.
Again, this is plainly untrue-some of the largest periods of development in history have happened without any sort of modern finance whatsoever. Finance is
one method of assigning the right to use resources, not the only one. In some places it has happened by birthright, in others by force (ie, your resources go here or my soldiers come and shoot you, ala Russia), and so on.
Capital improvement is a name for the method by which the right to demand resources from others is assigned; it is not a natural fact of human production.
Monkeyleg, I agree in principle with the point that modern finance has outpaced other forms of development (for the most part-there are odd examples of command economies vastly outpacing economies that worked more like a capitalist/finance economy in the 20th century)....but in terms of "jewish financial culture", I don't think there is such a thing, and I do note that the prime time of Islamic civilizations was under the Islamic financial system, which was mostly abandoned after the mongol invasions....monetary and banking policy is a big part of Islamic law, and it was advanced for its day.
