The Rt Rev Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, who is a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, and a former oil executive working for the French company Elf Aquitaine and Enterprise Oil, where he was treasurer before leaving to join the Church in the 1980s, whilst Speaking at a conference in Zurich, Switzerland, has suggested that the banking sector must be rebuilt “from the ruins” of the financial crisis to become something that “helps people rather than being there for people to help it”.
"But one principle seems to me to be clear, we cannot repair what was destroyed in 2008, we can only replace it with something that is dedicated to the support of human society, to the common good and to solidarity."Financial services are crucial to human development, but they only do their job when the work they carry out is done in a way that is truly a service" said the Bishop.
Bishop Wellby then remarked that, "The task of all those involved in the supervision, the legislation for, and participation in the financial markets is to find that once in a generation leap of imagination that does not simply seek to repair what was destroyed in 2008, but to replace it with something that is of lasting value," he said in his speech.
"Repair would be as inadequate a solution as beginning to put the stones of Coventry Cathedral back one on top of each other, to try and recreate what had been obliterated [during World War II]."
The Bishop noted that, banks were "exponents of anarchy" before the financial crisis in 2008 because they pursued "activity without purpose".
The Bishop then explained: "Activity without purpose is anarchy. It may not look like anarchy, it may in fact be very well organised anarchy but unless it has a serious and clear purpose activity is merely random.
"One of the biggest faults in the pre 2008 financial markets was essentially they were exponents of anarchy in this sense. They involved wild and frantic activity, often by exceptionally intelligent people, working very long hours, but they had no socially useful purpose.”
Read more:
The Bishop of Durham, The Rt Rev Justin Welby
http://www.durham.anglican.org/people-and-places/the-bishop-of-durham.aspx
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The Telegraph, 27 October 2012