TIMES ONLINE: The Archbishop of Canterbury has waded into the debate on bankers' bonuses, warning that financiers feel no "repentance" for the excesses of the boom that led to financial meltdown.
Dr Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, said the Government should have acted to cap bonuses and he warned that the gap between rich and poor would lead to an increasingly "dysfunctional" society.
Dr Williams told BBC2's Newsnight programme: "There hasn't been a feeling of closure about what happened last year.
"There hasn't been what I would, as a Christian, call repentance. We haven't heard people saying 'well actually, no, we got it wrong and the whole fundamental principle on which we worked was unreal, empty'."
Asked if the City was returning to business as usual he said: "I worry. I feel that's precisely what I call the 'lack of closure' coming home to roost. It's a failure to name what was wrong. To name that, what I called last year 'idolatry', that projecting of reality and substance onto things that don't have them."
His remarks referred to an article he wrote in The Spectator a year ago in which he warned that society was at risk of turning to idolatry in its worship of wealth. >>> Robert Lindsay | Wednesday, September 16, 2009
