Finance adds a LOT to the economy. The basic idea of finance is deciding where the most "return" is - ie, what investments are the most productive. If you gave money to every entrepreneur who came asking, you'd be out of money by the end of the day.
Money has meaning. There is a limited supply, and that means you have to prioritize who gets it. It has to be in limited supply in order for it to have "meaning." In order to motivate people to do things, we give them money, instead of trying to guess that they want payment in the form of, say, "a two bedroom house in Santa Monica with a 30 yr mortgage, a 2007 Prius Hybrid on a 5 yr lease, Montessori school for the 7 year old..." Using money not only gives people the freedom to choose what they consume, but it removes the guesswork from employers. If you just hand out money to anyone, you have no price stability, and no ability to plan for the future.
Deciding who to give money to on what terms, based solely on their ability to honor the terms of the understood mutual agreement, is essential to the economy operating. Finance is the art of acquiring money from one source, such as bank stockholders or bond holders, and allocating that money to borrowers or investments in such a way that you reduce the idiosyncratic risk (which your investors want to avoid), thus earning compensation and a premium.
How would you feel if you could only buy a house, or a car, or a college education, or whatever you get on credit cards if you could only buy those products after you had all the money to pay for them in full at the time of purchase? Or if you could never get an incentive to save money? If you've ever been a saver or a borrower, the answer is you'd be worse off, by your revealed preference.
The problems only occur when parts of these statements are negated. For example, if banks extend credit to people who can't repay it, or if bank risk managers are idiots, or if the agreements aren't mutually understood and agreed to. Yeah, there's always going to be people who exploit their position to do unethical things, in any field. I think credit card companies are blood suckers, and I think using credit cards is evil. But I sure as hell save and invest in companies I believe have the ability to improve peoples lives and get paid for it.
Don't blame finance, blame the people who use it to do evil.