Has Europe Lost Its Soul To The Markets

[John21652]

Britain’s Chief Rabbi has this to say about the current economic plight of Europe in his article " Has Europe lost its soul to the markets" -

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we — Jews and Christians, side by side — must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe to recover its soul.

The idea of religious leaders saving the euro and the EU sounds absurd. What has religion to do with economics, or spirituality with financial institutions? The answer is that the market economy has religious roots. It emerged in a Europe saturated with Judeo-Christian values.

The Chief Rabbi, Lord Sachs, says market failure is moral failure.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Rabbi Sachs’ essay is worth reprinting in its entirely, but here is an interesting and very pointed and specific excerpt:

**"Those who encouraged people to take out mortgages they could not repay were guilty of what the Bible calls “putting a stumbling block before the blind”.
**
*The build-up of personal and collective debt in America and Europe should have sent warning signals to anyone familiar with the biblical institutions of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, created specifically because of the danger of people being trapped by debt. ***Those who encouraged this recklessness protected themselves but not others from the consequences.**Ultimately, financial failure is the result of moral failure: a failure of long-term responsibility to the societies of which we are a part, and to future generations who will bear the cost of our mistakes. It is a symptom of a wider failure: to see the market as a means not an end.

The Bible paints a graphic picture of what happens when people cease to see gold as a medium of exchange and start seeing it as an object of worship.** It calls it the Golden Calf. Its antidote is the Sabbath: one day in seven in which we neither work nor employ, shop or spend. **It is time dedicated to things that have a value, not a price: family, community, and thanksgiving to God for what we have, instead of worrying about what we lack. It is no coincidence that in Britain, Sunday and financial markets were deregulated at about the same time."

 

[Abu]

What has religion to do with economics, or spirituality with financial institutions? The answer is that the market economy has religious roots. It emerged in a Europe saturated with Judeo-Christian values.
Very true.

The Chief Rabbi, Lord Sachs, says market failure is moral failure.

It would seem that all failure, in whatever field, can be laid at the door of moral failure, if the science is sound.

As a science, Economics was developed by the Catholic Late Scholastics who Joseph Schumpeter described as the first real economists. The reality was affirmed by Pope Benedict XVI who affirmed that “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

The moral failure most decidedly includes those in government who legislate interference that distorts free enterprise and precipitates booms and busts through foolish economic policies, and discourages thrift and enterprise with a welfarism and stimuli that weaken the functions of society and business to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.

 

[John21652]

…

The moral failure most decidedly includes those in government who legislate interference that distorts free enterprise and precipitates booms and busts through foolish economic policies, and discourages thrift and enterprise with a welfarism and stimuli that weaken the functions of society and business to the detriment of both economic and civil freedom.

Yesterday, Italy’s Prime Minister, Mario Monti, was quoted as saying -

*The Italian economy has been held back for decades. More competition means more openness, more space for young people, less space for privileges and rent-seeking, more space for merit. *

His comments about “rent seeking” and privileges is a telling one, for both problems are common to economies which have allowed governments to play a large role in economic activities, which of necessity, requires a large bureaucratic structure run according to rules and regulation.

Britain’s The Telegraph has an article titled The rise of the overclass, which it describes as a super rich elite cut off from the rest of society.

Senior bankers, private equity moguls and hedge fund managers appear cut off from the rest of us. They often pay little or no tax, increasingly live in heavily guarded enclaves, and some have little or no real allegiance to Britain. The sources of their wealth are often mysterious, and appear unrelated to merit…Taxpayers spent £60 billion bailing out City bankers to save them from bankruptcy. Yet, rather than displaying contrition or gratitude, these bankers continue to pay themselves multi-million pound salaries, unimaginable sums of money to most of us. The injustice is glaring…

The article also points out that a system of government was built under Tony Blair that relies on a series of alliances with tycoons and private equity moguls. That is a bastardisation of the capitalist system which creates wealth like no other system ever invented, according to britain’s prime Minister. The trouble is that this bastardised capitalism may result in a ‘politics of envy’ that will penalise creativity even further. Italy’s prime minister can see an obvious solition, now adopted by his Cabinet, which is the further liberalisation of the market.

In speechb titled The Limits Of Secularism, Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Lord Sachs, quoted American Historian Will Durant, who wrote of the decline of civilisations -

Institutions that were first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce tend to escape from ecclesiastical control and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology, and after some hesitation the moral code allied with it. … Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos. … In the end, a society and its religion tend to fall together like body and soul in a harmonious death.

It would seem that the decline in moral values has resulted in a dedication to a bastardised ‘market economy’ that is out of control because of an immorality propped up by rule and regulation and disguised as ‘capitalism’.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Yep, the free market needs to become just that–a free market.

 

[Captain_America]

There is no such thing as “free” enterprise or the “free” market. This is stuck in some people’s heads like dusy moths, or, as Kurt Vonnegut might describe it, as a a “granfalloon.” Just an endearing, dopey, goofy notion we can’t shake from our thoughts.

 

[John21652]

There is no such thing as “free” enterprise or the “free” market. This is stuck in some people’s heads like dusy moths, or, as Kurt Vonnegut might describe it, as a a “granfalloon.” Just an endearing, dopey, goofy notion we can’t shake from our thoughts.

How so?