With bank bailouts and executive bonuses in the headlines, it’s hard to find the connection between banking and ethics.
But it’s an argument that Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC ”” one of the biggest banks in the world ”” makes in his new book about banking: Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World.
Green is also an ordained priest in the Church of England. In his book, he proposes a “new capitalism” that brings good business and good ethics together. He says moral and spiritual values should take precedence over immediate profit.
No, bankers need a law. They have demonstrated the inability to follow any kind of moral or ethical “compass”. There needs to be a law that requires them to follow the usury laws of each state they send a bill to. If that state has a maximum interest rate of 10%, that’s it, that is their maximum. If they don’t think they can get by lending money at 10%, then they don’t operate in that state and the lose ALL the business in that state.
That still leaves a giant gaping hole in regulating bank ethics. The Fed is still out there and they are still inflating away everyone’s purchasing power. We need to return to a currency anchored by some sort of commodity and then re-introduce the concept of the 1792 Coinage Act, making it a death penalty offense to debase the currency.
For those that think that is crazy talk…well, we’ve tried it the other way and what we have now is an entire world financial system on the brink of collapse (keep your eye on the PIGS) after just narrowly escaping that exact same fate in September of 2008. Now, after all that, doing more of the same is the real crazy talk.