[1] http://www2.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/eco212i/lectures/ch13-1...
Banks are living on "Credit", which is unethical and does not correspond to any creation of goods or services in the real economy.
Even employment is a form of credit. "I'll work X hours on this task, and at this time, you will pay me $X" is an incredibly simplified form of credit.
Borrowing a few bucks to make it to payday from your friends isn't unethical for either the lender or the payer.
Usury is what is unethical about lending, specifically unregulated usury. That, and being allowed to refuse service to people or businesses that you don't like or whose legal business your stakeholders find distasteful.
If you're in the banking or finance business, you shouldn't be allowed to choose to not provide service for citizens who are performing legal business, and you should have the amount of profit that you make from a lending transaction regulated and limited by a third party whose goal is to ensure equal treatment.
See Fractional Reserve Banking for the gory details, but the gist of it is, private banks create money out of thin air (within limits) so they can lend it to you. And then they charge interest back for it.
That's not how it should work. First there's the morally questionable interest rates to begin with (not all societies or religions permitted that), but even if we assume it is legitimate, the justification for this is something about investment and risk taking. Which are supposed to involve your own funds, not money you printed out of thin air.
But there is a risk, and there is a service. How should they charge for it? Well, it's simple: risks are supposed to be (and are) handled by insurances. And then there's the paperwork and checking and all that that most likely should involve a flat rate. This should be much more ethical than charging interest over money that didn't even exist to begin with.
(Edit: 3 downvotes in 30 minutes, no rebuttal… guess I hit a nerve. I'll just say this: if you disagree with anything I've said here so strongly that you feel the need to downvote it, at least take the time necessary to articulate to yourself why.)
