RESPONSIBILITY for the present financial crisis does not rest solely with bankers, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in a lecture in Cardiff on Saturday.
“It is a little too easy to blame the present situation on an accumulation of individual greed, exemplified by bankers or brokers, and to lose sight of the fact that governments committed to deregulation and to the encouragement of speculation and high personal bor rowing were elected repeatedly in Britain and the United States for a crucial couple of decades. . . We are left with the question of what it was that skewed the judgement of a whole society, as well as of financial professionals.”
In his lecture, Dr Williams dis man tled capitalism into its constituent parts, finding an element of ethical purpose at its centre in the way it sought to limit risk and share wealth. Present-day capitalism, however, had lost sight of these principles, not least the links between money and labour, and power and powerlessness.
Successive governments colluded with the concept of reducing financial risk for the people and increasing choice: “Government rests its legitimacy upon its capacity to satisfy consumer demands and maximise choices.”
Two essential elements of capitalism — the handling of risk, and the husbanding of finite resources — had been forgotten in recent years, Dr Williams suggested. Investments in financial services helped to “foster the illusion that the money market is effectively risk-free”.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=71786
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