TRUST THE LORD OF THE MARKET, NOT THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
Today’s banking crisis has its roots in a shared culture of shallow and expendable relationships

Once the global financial crisis has washed its victims away like a tsunami, the reconstruction will begin. At its heart should be a renewed series of relationships, the most evident of which is between governments and markets. The great Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to a new deal for Americans and the eventual dominance of Keynesian economic theory. The involvement of governments in markets then came to be seen as interference in the 1970s and 80s as the thinking of Friedman and Hayek found political expression through the Thatcher and Reagan administrations. Such was the power of the unfettered market in the popular imagination in recent times that it had become something of an idol which could not be challenged. Anyone who did so was accused of heresy.

 

Not any more.

 

In the same way that swaggering union leaders were cut down to size by a series of employment laws in the 1980s, so a new generation of city financiers, wounded by spectacular market failure, may find the public is much less sympathetic to their sense of entitlement and the validity of unregulated markets.

 

The market has delivered unparalleled prosperity to the developed nations, but this has resulted in a misplaced and uncritical reverence. Despite its successes it remains a human invention and functions best in a network of relationships based on loyalty, trust, integrity and social responsibility (see John Kay’s The Truth About Markets Penguin, 2003). There are inherent contradictions in the market’s operation because it tends over time to undermine these values by loosening the social and familial ties they are nurtured in. As labour markets are liberalised and social mobility becomes the norm, the relationships which people flourish in are broken up and obligation to others becomes more tenuous.

 

The emergence of obscene levels of wealth in the hands of a few and its legitimisation in the media has also sent out a message until now that lavish consumption is both socially acceptable and to be aspired to. Wealth can be glue which binds us together in mutual obligation or a guillotine which cuts us in two in divisive self-interest. The schadenfreude in evidence publicly over the demise of the banking sector is an unappealing response to a genuine problem. In our political debate, equality of outcome long ago gave way to equality of opportunity, but there is much evidence that seriously unequal societies are mentally unhealthy. A radical levelling of outcomes tends to create disincentives in a market economy predicated on risk and reward but any Christian choosing to argue for vast disparities in outcome has to satisfy the golden rule: could they justify this to their Lord?

 

The irony is that risk and reward have been de-coupled in this banking crisis, with traders risking other people’s money to gain bonuses, shareholders without loyalty to the long-term viability of sound companies and boards relying on the government to bail them out when they got it wrong. As stakeholders in the economy, through the likes of pension funds, most of us are caught up in this game: wanting the maximum return for the minimum commitment.

 

Our response to this as Christian people should probably be one of repentance and faith. Society has become selfish and acquisitive, disinterested in God and neighbour, and we are implicated in this. Yet it is still going to be tempting to lay the blame with the fiendishly complex derivative markets and thus externalise the problem in soothingly neutral mathematical equations. Can we resist this and accept our share in the culture which created the crisis? The other calling is to faith. Prayer for wise and visionary global leadership is needed, that new forms of regulation would reflect the character of God and create a new deal – not just for the affluent but most especially for the poor.

 

In Deuteronomy it says:

 

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God…otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down…then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God…You may say to yourself ‘my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me’.
(Deuteronomy 8:11 and following verses)

 

I think this is a fair description of Britain today.

Now it’s time to:

 

Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth. (Deuteronomy 8:18)

 

If Jesus is Lord of all creation, then he is Lord of the markets too