The post-crash principle for banks: be moral or bust | Zoe Williams

Ten years on from the financial crisis, the sustainability of the planet is at stake - markets cannot survive without moralityThe real question that should mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crash is a moral one: what was finance for, what was investment for, what was corporate activity for, in 2008, and what is it for now? So far, analyses have focused on two dimensions of the crisis. First, whether enough was subsequently done, in terms of new regulation and technical fixes such as ringfencing the banks, to prevent a repeat meltdown. And second, a focus on the consequences - the global political upheaval that came in its wake, or more precisely, the decade of immiseration that the briefly thrilling, phosphorous destruction unleashed.Both approaches risk being a distraction. The next crisis most likely won't come from improperly supervised instruments of speculative finance. The Economist, for example, suggests the risks lie in the level of household borrowing and the euro. And while it is impossible to avoid asking whether the super-rich simply walked away from the wreckage, laughing as they left societies trying to hold themselves together through painful austerity, the answer generates resentment and a lust for revenge. To know that a disproportionate concentration of wealth is destabilising as well as unjust does not give us a meaningful or creative blueprint for the future we want to build. Continue reading...