This has been hanging around in my RSS feed with a must blog tag attached to it for several months now. It's Margaret Atwood talking about debt, not just in the context of financial crisis, but its whole relationship to slavery, social equity and our relationship with the planet out of which we eke an increasingly precarious existence. I was also reading elsewhere of the increasing interest show in Islamic Banking, the proven success of the Grameen Bank and other forms of Micro-lending. In 325 the clergy were forbidden usury in the First Council of Nicaea. Thomas Acquinas taught that living of interest alone was a sin, while sharing the risk of an investment was not. Dante placed ursers on the inner ring of the seventh circle of hell, a barren plain of sand ignited by flakes of fire. There is a pattern here, and it may be time to reread the parable of the talents for a new world which if it is not brave at least needs to less gung ho.
Comments (2)
I am just today finishing Atwood's book "Payback - Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth" and must say it is very interesting indeed.
She uses etymology, mythology and the interpretation of many of the "stories" and plots of classic literature to point out in a range of useful ways how central (and often problematic) the concept and use of debt are to the ways in which we live together.
Posted by Jon Husband | January 1, 2009 7:11 PM
Posted on January 1, 2009 19:11
In Europe, at least, this is a touchy subject. It turns out that people need to borrow money after all, and the workaround was to find a loophole for the Jews to do it -- and we know how well /that/ worked out for both sides.
If you look at the institutions that failed, including the Fed , most of them were led by a dominating individual who crushed dissent. Prospect magazine nominated Fred Goodwin, recently of RBS, as Worst Banker in the World, because his crash was totally his own responsibility. The problems were based on known failure modes like a bonus culture and raw ignorance.
Posted by Steve Freeman | January 8, 2009 12:23 PM
Posted on January 8, 2009 12:23