Are capitalists choking on their canapés?
Yesterday saw the opening of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. In the past few years this has made the headline news, but this year it appears to be a much lower key affair. The WEF is the elite of the world financial, business and political establishments. Usually all the big hitters are there, but their number, this year is depleted.
Bob Diamond the president of Barclays Capital and owner of one of the biggest banking salaries in the world is conspicuous by his absence, as is Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit and of course Scotland’s own former premier league banker Sir Fred Goodwin.
It appears the feel good factor has deserted even the obscenely rich and powerful. In previous years when things in the garden seemed rosy and capitalism had appeared to have conquered the world, the cabal that forms WEF began to look beyond the balance sheet at the wider picture of Global development. However it seems unlikely that in the frozen economic climate that poverty, unfair trade practices and sustainable growth for developing countries will be high on the agenda this year.
Which is a tragedy, for whilst recessions come and go, relatively speaking the rich continues to get richer and the poor in the world get poorer. In times when the west has to tighten its belt it is the overwhelming poor in the world that suffers; and the truth is nobody really cared when things were going well, now we are suffering the third world are relegated further behind with the credit crunch and bank bale outs dominating.
It’s true that Jesus said you will always have the poor with you, [John Ch12:8] but somehow I don’t think this is quite what he had in mind as to how they should be treated when he said it.
Talking of Sir Fred Goodwin, I genuinely feel for him. Fred the Shred they call him now, as the Royal Bank of Scotland is now 70% owned by the government. But rewind back 18 months ago and Sir Fred couldn’t have put a foot wrong. Hailed as a financial genius he led the Royal Bank to unparalleled heights. By who? By exactly the same people who cry for his blood now, the press and the shareholders of RBS. The same people who encouraged him to take more and more risks in order to make more and more money. Would Sir Fred have received such adulation and honours had he taken a more conservative line. Probably not, indeed maybe the job would have gone to someone who would have taken similar risks instead.
Clearly Sir Fred is a very visible scapegoat for the financial sins of the many. Many ancient middle eastern cultures used the scapegoat, a real goat driven into the wilderness, as a metaphor for atonement, repentance and forgiveness. In Leviticus Ch16 regulations are given to the ancient Israelites for a scapegoat again representing the sins of the people to be driven away from the community. It’s a powerful picture for humans, but in the case of Sir Fred where is the atonement on our part for the greed and wealth accumulated? The blame falls on a few individuals who did make foolish and greedy decisions for thief financial institutions, but we were compliant in that. We cannot be absolved from blame. For we in the west enjoyed the very good times it brought for us. Now the chill bites we look for someone to blame, yet our society stubbornly denies to acknowledge its role in creating the current crisis in the banking sector. Will society ever take its responsibilities along with its privileges? History suggests apparently not. Maybe until we do we shall always struggle to understand the concept of the Kingdom of God.
