Bankers Need To Recconect With Their Morals?

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15619089

Bankers urged to 'reconnect with morals'

A former senior banker is to lead an initiative aimed at helping the City to reconnect with its moral foundations.

Ken Costa, an Anglican church warden, has been asked by the Bishop of London Richard Chartres to start a dialogue about ethical capitalism.

It comes ahead of the publication of a report on the morality of City workers by a research institute linked to St Paul's Cathedral later.

A protest against corporate greed began on 15 October at St Paul's.

An offshoot of the Occupy Movement, which began on Wall Street in New York, the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters have been camping in the cathedral's churchyard.

Meanwhile, about 50 demonstrators have gathered outside Guildhall, in the City of London, to protest about the low wages of cleaners.

The scale of bankers' pay, and the ethics of modern capitalism, is a controversial issue with the public.

The publication of the St Paul's report into City morality had been postponed after the resignation of the cathedral's canon chancellor over the protest camp outside the church.

Three clerics from the cathedral have resigned their posts amid controversy related to the protest.

'Spiritual dimension'

Mr Costa, a former chairman of Lazard International, discussed the dilemmas faced by City workers in a BBC interview.

"We split up the human person and said look you're only a financial person, try and get financial returns, and forgot that there was ethical and a spiritual dimension to humans as well," he said.

"We've seen huge levels of stress. We've seen judgements that have had to be made without much wisdom, and we've seen a departure from the framework that the prime minister told us moral capitalism needed."

(continued)

[Svartalf]

Banker with morals is an oxymoron, I hear that you have to burn yours in presence of HR personnel before you are hired.

and human nature makes ethical capitalism another oxymoron... you may try, but greed and the spirit of lucre will throw the ethics overboard in short order.

[Schneibster]

I don't agree. I think there are specific things wrong that got us where we are now, that we know what they are, that we know what to do about them, and that we ought to get about convincing everyone that we should do them. I think making good economics should make good politics. Even a sociopath can see the sense in not pissing off half the human race. The Chinese eventually did.

[Clinton Huxley]

Try to impose new rules on the banking system and they will work for a while. Then some institution will discover it can make a slightly better return by "bending" those rules and before you know, its all fucked up again.

[Audley Strange]

Moral Bankers would destroy the economy by not giving debt to people who should not have debt, or in fact indulging in the practice of usury, which I think some people find immoral. Bet you the church would be happy with its slice though.

[Schneibster]

Try to impose new rules on the banking system and they will work for a while. Then some institution will discover it can make a slightly better return by "bending" those rules and before you know, its all fucked up again.

No, see, they even know how to take care of that. The problem this time was that they dismantled the warning system, which they never should have been permitted to do. They won't be again, when this is all over; every time they try we just point to this and the Great Depression. That's enough proof for anyone.

And they didn't even manage to run it all the way off the tracks, the way they did in 1929. Some of the things we did after that kept it from ever getting that bad again. So far, anyway; and it looks like people are done fucking around and are now paying attention.

[Atheist-Lite]

Try to impose new rules on the banking system and they will work for a while. Then some institution will discover it can make a slightly better return by "bending" those rules and before you know, its all fucked up again.

The key problem is that banks are like perpetual motion machines. They have a licence to print lend money in the form of debt far in excess of what they have if all the savers ever wanted their money back. It becomes a confidence trick. The whole edifice would crumble in a instant if reality broke through so the masses are constantly mind fucked by the mass media, kept entranced and distracted. Then there comes days like this when reality does start to break into the greater consciousness and the runs on the banks begin.

[Schneibster]

Moral Bankers would destroy the economy by not giving debt to people who should not have debt,

That's actually not only not true, it's anti-regulation propaganda. "You can't fix it," that says. Yes, Audley, you can fix it, and we know how.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I blame Darwin.

[Schneibster]

Try to impose new rules on the banking system and they will work for a while. Then some institution will discover it can make a slightly better return by "bending" those rules and before you know, its all fucked up again.

The key problem is that banks are like perpetual motion machines. They have a licence to print lend money in the form of debt far in excess of what they have if all the savers ever wanted their money back. It becomes a confidence trick. The whole edifice would crumble in a instant if reality broke through so the masses are constantly mind fucked by the mass media, kept entranced and distracted. Then there comes days like this when reality does start to break into the greater consciousness and the runs on the banks begin.

Not this time.

Bad enough, though.

[Clinton Huxley]

Try to impose new rules on the banking system and they will work for a while. Then some institution will discover it can make a slightly better return by "bending" those rules and before you know, its all fucked up again.

No, see, they even know how to take care of that. The problem this time was that they dismantled the warning system, which they never should have been permitted to do. They won't be again, when this is all over; every time they try we just point to this and the Great Depression. That's enough proof for anyone.

And they didn't even manage to run it all the way off the tracks, the way they did in 1929. Some of the things we did after that kept it from ever getting that bad again. So far, anyway; and it looks like people are done fucking around and are now paying attention.

"money talks and bullshit walks" as they say. The bankers will always have some glib argument as to why they should have total freedom of action and politicians are ever willing to hear it. Ten years from now, the lessons from this financial rout will all be forgotten and the merry-go-round will be off again.

[Schneibster]

That depends on whether we start listening to real economists or not.

[Svartalf]

I blame Darwin.

you need a "post count +1" emoticon.

[Clinton Huxley]

That depends on whether we start listening to real economists or not.

I saw one of those, once. At the zoo. In the cage next to the unicorn.

[Svartalf]

That depends on whether we start listening to real economists or not.

define "real economist"?
problem is that bullshit ones come right out of the same schools, they just spout drivel to support the party line, and probably blind themselves to the fact they are not telling the truth.