Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Ok, so I thought I'd weigh-in a little about the credit crisis. I'm not going to comment on executive bonuses, the infeasibility of bailout plans which merely restore the former mess or any of the many other issues that are being debated.
I instead want to look a little at the statements of two British Archbishops who
condemned city practices. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams voiced his opposition to:
paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders
and that the economic setting
exposes the element of basic unreality in the situation - the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders
It is necessary to pause and consider that this is, in some senses, the approach that the church has taken for many years. If the financial crisis is to be seen as an opportunity for the church to reassert its long standing, if not always practised, opposition to usury then it is my assertion that many of their own undertakings can be seen as having "no concrete outcome beyond profit" involving "unimaginable levels of fiction".
Staying rooted thirmly in theory and Without denigrating the praxis of CoE, which I am sure has been of benefit to many people (profit), it seems that a hypocrisy is at work in the church calling for a rooting in empiricism and reality. The entire setup of Christianity can be seen as being founded upon a form of usury; mankind is lent time on Earth (concrete) and a place in heaven (abstract) in exchange for a repayment of the time on Earth (debt) in a morally acceptable fashion (interest). This is of course presented as a beneficial setup for mankind because the rewards reaped are far greater than the repayment, even with interest. The fact that the substantiation of the benefits are non-concrete and require faith are brushed aside as having no relevance here.
The "financial crisis" is not a crisis. It is a realisation. It is the realisation that the solidity upon which economic practice has been predicated is nothing but air; the Marxist doctrine of modernism. We have melted. The church seeks to distance itself and critique these events to mask the fact that they are also in danger from this de-solidification.
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