Saturday 17 April 2010

Enron and the Financial Crisis II.


In this week's The Tablet there is an interesting article (Have lessons been learnt?) by Ben Andradi who works in the City in the private-equity industry. Here is taste of his article on the fallout from the world recession:
It's in the area of values and ideology that more lessons need to be learnt. The prevalent economic orthodoxy of the last 20 years has been complete belief in the power of free markets. Most politicians on both left and right embraced this with mantras such as "light touch regulation" and "maximising shareholder value". The belief-set was built on several commandments: firms always manage resources better than government (say that to the shareholders of Lehman Brothers, AIG and RBS!); tax cuts are the only policies of governments (but to finance the bail-outs taxes will have to rise); reduction of government power is desirable (except when the banks have to be bailed out.

and
The other dimension is to nurture virtues and values...Virtue is what happens when wise and good choices become second nature. Choosing the Common Good (the recent document from the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales) is on the mark in emphasising the importance of practising virtue. Moral habits need to be relearned and practised. Some church bodies are involved in training bankers on ethics and values such as, honesty, transparency, accurately reporting risks and striving for a higher standard of conduct beyond mere regulatory compliance.

6 comments:

  1. Please may I reccomend that people look at
    kindredofthequietway.blogspot.com when thinking about who they will cast their vote with.

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  2. Can I just make clear that political opinions expressed on The Invisible Province are the views of those who have posted them and should not be read as representing my own political views.

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  3. which are what ?

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  4. Hmmm - I'm thinking some members of the Catholic church might like to look a little closer to home in offering help with honesty, transparency, accurate reportin of risks and striving for a higher standard of conduct beyond mere compliance given the current state of the news headlines

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  5. I (and I suspect, the great majority Catholics) couldn't agree with "anonymous" more. Evidence of this is provided below:

    http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/catholic_church/media_centre/press_releases/press_releases_2010/statement_by_the_catholic_bishops_of_england_and_wales

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