Weaver95

There are days when I find myself wondering if our financial sector is taking it’s lead from parody sites like the Onion.  Take this story for example -a banker from Goldman-Sachs (of all places) giving a speech in church this past sunday.  In part, he says:

The 53-year-old head of Britain’s second-biggest bank said banks are the “backbone” of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn’t conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

So apparently exorbitant pay (often achieved via shady methods) isn’t any sort of moral hazard.  Hmm.  lets see what my rather rusty bible research skills can find on that subject:

2 Timothy 3

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

And that’s not going for the obvious thing about rich people and camels.  The article goes on to make mention of Britain’s financial situation:

City bonuses may rise by 50 percent to 6 billion pounds this year, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research Ltd., even after the U.K. economy contracted for six consecutive quarters, driving unemployment to a 14-year high of 7.9 percent. The gap between rich and poor in the U.K. reached its widest in five decades last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a non-partisan research group.

So what you’ve got here is a banker (and he’s probably not the only one) who’s not ONLY seen his pay increase by 50% over the past five years but he’s getting super rich while the rest of his fellow countrymen lose their jobs at an ever faster rate.  And his justification for this?  Oh, well Jesus said it was cool to pillage.  y’know dude, I don’t think it’s gonna work out for ya.

Now i’m all for making money.  I try to do it all the time myself.  But I don’t delude myself about it - making money, especially at that level, is often a zero sum game.  In other words, when you make money someone else is losing it.  What I think is happening here is that somewhere in the banking industry there is a dim level of awareness that piling up all that money while so many people are out of work and getting more and more poor by the hour is generating a negative PR backlash of epic proportions.  Bankers like having a positive image in the press - it’s good for business after all.  So a couple of the more aware types are trying to convince us all that raping, looting and pillaging is somehow justified in the Bible.  This is the same excuse listed by child molesters like NAMBLA for their activities too by the way.  So draw your own conclusions about how Goldman-Sachs little exercise in biblical justification is going to go over with the rank and file.

I should mention that I have no respect and little trust for Goldman-Sachs.  I think they abused their connections with the Bush administration in order to survive the initial wave of investment bank collapses.  And they still have some deep connections into the financial institutions of this country, and markets around the world.  Connections that they (ab) use to maintain an artificially inflated hold on key market indicators, as well as outright manipulating the market to their advantage.  In short, I think they’re cheating.  So that’s why I don’t trust them, or anyone who works for them.  Goldman-Sachs are just bad folks all around but there ain’t nothing I (or anyone else for that matter) can do about it.

So there you go.  Goldman-Sachs thinks they’ve got a religious justification for their self serving greed on wheels.  Amazing stuff ain’t it?