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Yeah, just to expand very slightly on Xazy's excellent answer about usury, we are permitted to charge non-Jews interest, but in addition to having to follow secular law in regard to maximums and prohibitions of usury, the trend in halakhic literature has been to encourage Jews in the business of moneylending to non-Jews to charge fair rates in general, so that non-Jews will never have cause to accuse Jews of unfair practices in business, and minimal rates to poorer non-Jews, so that they will not associate Jews with increasing their poverty. Those halakhot have never changed, so one hopes that Jews in finance are still following them, although I suppose one never knows....
Since the rise of complex capitalism, the halakhot of business have been interpreted in such ways as to establish loopholes for Jews to own stock in banks and financial agencies and institutions that make loans at interest, some of which may go to Jews, and many of which go to non-Jews. It was deemed that otherwise, Jews in finance would simply be unable to make a living. But Jews are still prohibited from charging interest to one another on personal loans.
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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