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  3. Hurling brickbats at bankers is a popular pastime. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement and its various branches complain that a vi

Hurling brickbats at bankers is a popular pastime. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement and its various branches complain that a vi

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问题     Hurling brickbats at bankers is a popular pastime. The "Occupy Wall Street" movement and its various branches complain that a vicious 1%, many of them bankers, are ripping off the virtuous 99%. Hollywood has vilified financiers in "Wall Street" and "Wall Street 2". Mountains of books make the same point without using Michael Douglas.
    Anger is understandable. The financial crisis of 2007 — 08 has produced the deepest recession since the 1930s. Most of the financiers at the heart of it have got off unharmed. The biggest banks are bigger than ever. Bonuses are flowing once again. The old saw about bankers—that they believe in capitalism when it comes to pocketing the profits and socialism when it comes to paying for the losses—is too true for comfort.
    But is the fierce reaction in danger of going too far? A glance at history suggests that we should be nervous. For centuries the hatred of moneylending went hand in hand with a hatred of rootlessness. Cosmopolitan moneylenders were harder to tax than immobile landowners, governments muttered. In a denouncement of the Rothschilds, Heinrich Heine, a German poet, fumed that money "is more fluid than water and less steady than air. " This prejudice has proven dangerous. Without money to grease them, the wheels of commerce turn slowly or not at all. Civilisations that have eased the ban on moneylending have grown rich. Those that have retained it have stagnated. Northern Italy boomed in the 15th century when the Medicis and other banking families found ways to bend the rules. Economic leadership passed to Protestant Europe when Luther and Calvin made moneylending acceptable. As Europe pulled ahead, the usury-banning Islamic world remained trapped in poverty.
    The rise of banking has often been accompanied by a flowering of civilisation. Great financial centres have often been great artistic centres—from Florence in the Renaissance to Amsterdam in the 17th century to London and New York today. Countries that have chased away the moneylenders have been artistic-deserts. Where would New York’s SoHo be without Wall Street?
    Prejudice against financiers can cause non-economic damage, too. Throughout history, moneylenders have been persecuted. Ethnic minorities—most obviously the Jews in Europe and America—have clustered in the financial sector first because they were barred from more "respectable" pursuits and later because success generates success. At times, anti-banking prejudice has acquired a strong color of ethnic hatred. A survey in the Boston Review in 2009 found that 25% of non-Jewish Americans blamed Jews for the financial crisis. Today, the combination of hard times and harsh rhetoric could also produce something nasty.
    The crisis of 2008 showed that global finance requires tough medicine. Banks must be forced to hold bigger reserves. "Weapons of mass destruction" must be removed. The culture of short-term incentives needs to be revised. But demonising bankers will not solve these problems—and may well, if unchecked, bring a lot of ancient ugliness back to life.
The major drive behind persecutions of moneylenders throughout history was______.
选项 A、the prejudice against the rootless
B、the contempt for humble occupations
C、the flaming up of ethnic hatred
D、the hatred of the rich
答案C
解析 由题干关键词persecutions定位到第五段。该段指出，纵观历史，放债者一直受到迫害；少数民族(最明显的是欧洲的犹太人)集中在了金融业，起初因为他们被禁止从事更“体面”的职业，后来因为他们越做越成功；反银行业的偏见不时会沾染上强烈的种族仇恨色彩。不难看出，迫害放债人主要是出于民族／种族仇恨。[C]选项正确。
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