I find it unfortunate that the writer of this chapter doesn't know anything about economics. A writer must know about what he is writing. For teach children, first, you must teach yourself.
The issue of the economy has more relation with Star Wars than it seems. It's important to know how the monetary system works in order to understand how governments and banks can dominate the people by, simply, printing money and creating inflation. To enslave people it is enough to have control over the currency that these people using. And this has been happening as all the currencies of the world have stopped being backed by gold and silver. Separated the currency from gold, all Central Banks have been able to manipulate the money and interest rates at their absolute will. Thus, the people of the whole planet no longer have a monetary refuge and can be plundered by their respective States through the hidden tax of inflation. Because of that, I'm afraid that we are living now in times of the Empire.
The writer of this episode doesn't know how the banking system works. Today, bankers get rich manipulating the currency and interest rates, in a form opposed of how here is narrated. Bankers don't want control over the currency in order to have high interest rates, but just the opposite. The lower the interest rates, the easier to get people to ask for loans. More loans and mortgages; more profit by charging interest. And, at the same time, it is also cheap for governments to increase their debt in order to raise their public spending. All economic crises of the past 100 years have occurred for this reason: for the expansion of money credit, because bankers have put artificially low interest rates.
If anyone is interested in these issues, I recommend read the speech of Ron Paul "The end of dollar hegemony" and the books of the authors of the Austrian School of Economics: Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Juan Ramón Rallo, Carlos Rodríguez Braun, etc...