There has always been violence and there has always been greed in the world. They are containable when law and good government act effectively against them. They become utterly devastating, however, when they take over the reins of power, override law and invade the national culture. The culture of violence underlay the Nazi party in Germany and brought it to power in 1933. From there it went on to infect the whole German nation and bring world-wide destruction. It found a true bedfellow in the equally strong Japanese culture of violence which devastated the Far East and gave us “world” war.
In our generation the culture of greed has captured the economic high places of Western Society; it is not something that appears in a few hidden places, it is endemic. It is highly toxic, it is virulently poisonous and it has already brought widespread economic devastation – in the U.S. alone a national debt of $13 trillion. It was precisely this culture of greed among the rich, the influential and the rulers that Amos and his fellow prophets exposed in the society of their day. Their call was a call back to a forgotten morality and to the fear of God. Ridiculed and ignored they none the less continued to call.
The new Western systemic culture of greed can be illustrated in the story of the U.S. Long-Term Capital Management fund of the 1990s. A group of extremely able professors and economists from Ivy League Universities thought they had devised an infallible mathematical scheme for forcasting long term movements in financial capital. This meant they could invest large sums of money with inevitable and large profits. It was the ultimate gamblers’ dream. Disdaining their distinguished academic roles, their sole aim was now to make as much money as possible, and their status was in proportion to their pay and their profits. They gambled with borrowed money, in billions of dollars, borrowed from significant and leading investors, and charged those who invested with them enormous fees. They typified the new kind of ruthless shark swimming in the waters of the financial world. They made no useful contribution at all to world economy but made “kills” simply by moving money assets around the table. Finally in 1998 the “infallible” scheme was caught out and the fund collapsed with losses of $billions. A bail out by banks had to be arranged very quickly to stop the shock waves destroying the economy. But many paid bitterly for the fiasco.
This high level culture of greed, however, did not die with LTCM. On the contrary it was growing everywhere, rapidly. It had crossed the Atlantic (and other oceans!) and infected the whole banking system in Britain. The sense of responsibility of banking toward industry and the small customer was lost in the fever of making quick and large profit. Corruption became endemic. The rewards attracted the best brains in Britain to the City and the “bonus” became the essential target. We know where it has all led – to a bail out that dwarfs the LCTM bail out, and to the massive time bomb of unprecedented debt.
But, unbelievingly, the culture still remains, lurking in banks which, despite all that has happened, still stonewall any real restraint being placed on them. They are determined to pursue their “Casino” activities and give them precedence over the really productive banking that gives less profit but undergirds the economy and jobs. If they cannot be restrained then inevitably further disaster, and further collapse, probably complete collapse, will follow.This is a desperate lesson in the need of society for moral restraint.
In our generation the culture of greed has captured the economic high places of Western Society; it is not something that appears in a few hidden places, it is endemic. It is highly toxic, it is virulently poisonous and it has already brought widespread economic devastation – in the U.S. alone a national debt of $13 trillion. It was precisely this culture of greed among the rich, the influential and the rulers that Amos and his fellow prophets exposed in the society of their day. Their call was a call back to a forgotten morality and to the fear of God. Ridiculed and ignored they none the less continued to call.
The new Western systemic culture of greed can be illustrated in the story of the U.S. Long-Term Capital Management fund of the 1990s. A group of extremely able professors and economists from Ivy League Universities thought they had devised an infallible mathematical scheme for forcasting long term movements in financial capital. This meant they could invest large sums of money with inevitable and large profits. It was the ultimate gamblers’ dream. Disdaining their distinguished academic roles, their sole aim was now to make as much money as possible, and their status was in proportion to their pay and their profits. They gambled with borrowed money, in billions of dollars, borrowed from significant and leading investors, and charged those who invested with them enormous fees. They typified the new kind of ruthless shark swimming in the waters of the financial world. They made no useful contribution at all to world economy but made “kills” simply by moving money assets around the table. Finally in 1998 the “infallible” scheme was caught out and the fund collapsed with losses of $billions. A bail out by banks had to be arranged very quickly to stop the shock waves destroying the economy. But many paid bitterly for the fiasco.
This high level culture of greed, however, did not die with LTCM. On the contrary it was growing everywhere, rapidly. It had crossed the Atlantic (and other oceans!) and infected the whole banking system in Britain. The sense of responsibility of banking toward industry and the small customer was lost in the fever of making quick and large profit. Corruption became endemic. The rewards attracted the best brains in Britain to the City and the “bonus” became the essential target. We know where it has all led – to a bail out that dwarfs the LCTM bail out, and to the massive time bomb of unprecedented debt.
But, unbelievingly, the culture still remains, lurking in banks which, despite all that has happened, still stonewall any real restraint being placed on them. They are determined to pursue their “Casino” activities and give them precedence over the really productive banking that gives less profit but undergirds the economy and jobs. If they cannot be restrained then inevitably further disaster, and further collapse, probably complete collapse, will follow.This is a desperate lesson in the need of society for moral restraint.
Thank God there are people still in high places who can see the need for restraint, even if they don’t like the word “moral”. But whether they like the word “moral” or not the fact is that humanity cannot survive without moral restraints. In the long history of political thought, those restraints have never been articulated better than in the Ten Commandments.
Bob
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Bob
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