THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Church of England must resist igniting a 1980s-style war of words with the Government over its attacks on the City, according to a senior banker and church official.
Ken Costa, a former bank chairman and head of a newly appointed Church committee charged with rebuilding links with the financial sector, has warned against a repeat of the bitter row that broke out after the publication of the clergy's landmark Faith in the City report 25 years ago.
At the time, the report provoked fury among senior Conservatives by levelling some of the blame for economic and spiritual decline at the door of the Thatcher administration.
Mr Costa, the chairman of the St Paul's Initiative, established by the Church to open up a debate on ethical capitalism, said the clergy's response to the ongoing protests outside St Paul's Cathedral must not turn into a "reheated Faith in the City".
In his first public comments since his appointment, Mr Costa insisted that a flourishing banking sector was "essential to any successful economy" and that financial incentives are "both valid and effective".
He also said that stiffer regulation of financial services was not necessarily the solution to the global economic crisis, saying, "you cannot regulate into existence a culture of honesty, integrity, truthfulness and responsibility". » | Graeme Paton | Monday, November 07, 2011
Ken Costa, a one-time Marxist turned City banker, seems to be saying that the Church should do and say nothing. So he wants the Church to shut up to allow the banksters to continue their theft and corruption, eh? I say that if the Church wants to be taken seriously, it should step up its attack on these fraudsters, not shut up.
In my opinion, it is time for bankers to have a code of ethics, just as doctors have in the Hippocratic Oath. Then, if they are found to be engaging in foul practice, they can have their licence to work in the banking sector taken away from them. – © Mark
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