Check out the headline at the bottom left of the Sunday Times front page. The man the London paper calls the most powerful banker on Earth says he is “just a banker ‘doing God’s work’” .

The report says Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein“proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of — $68m in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500m of Goldman stock he owns” .

Goldman Sachs looks set to pay about $20 billion in bonuses for its top traders this year, at a time when the fallout from last year’s financial crisis is still being felt and the United States unemployment rate has hit 10.2 percent, a 26-1/2-year high.

In his defence, Blankfein said in the interview: “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle … We have a social purpose.”

When Pope Benedict issued his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth) in July, he addressed it to “the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will”. That list puts Catholics first, but it gets around to a wider audience by the end. Maybe because of that sequence, most of the discussion about the document has been in Catholic circles.

But in the pope’s back yard, i.e. in Italy, the message has attracted a wider audience. In a rare reaction from a non-Christian organisation, the Italian Muslim association Comunità Religiosa Islamica (CO.RE.IS.) Italiana has welcomed the encyclical and drawn parallels between its outlook and that of Islamic economic and social thinking. CO.RE.IS presented its reaction on the occasion of the Ecumenical Day of Christian-Islamic Dialogue in Italy on Tuesday. Following are some excerpts:

“The recent financial crisis, that witnessed an almost worldwide economic crash, should constitute a further confirmation of the impossibility of establishing a presumed society of wellbeing only upon market rules, excluding any transcendence, any metaphysical and religious perspective, as the pontiff has well expressed it … Just like the market cannot find in itself the meta-principles that would discipline it according to nature and to the function that God has entrusted to man on earth, money and capital cannot constitute a value in themselves, regardless of the finality of actions and of the realities that underlie their use…

“Islamic ethics, from its origins, develops the common principles of the Abrahamic civilisation as a whole aimed at providing ‘joint satisfaction in material and spiritual needs’. For example, the Islamic ban on loans with interest (ribâ) also existed in ancient Christianity. As early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Fathers of the Church, both Greeks and Latins, ardently opposed it based on both the Old Testament and the Gospel… “In the centuries that have passed, the West has wished to forget the economic principles present in religions, basically considering them to be, in modern times, a heritage of archaic thought. However, it is not about ‘turning back’ to some anachronistic and ideal restoration, but to consider, as Benedict XVI has done in his appeal, the real contribution that a religious sensibility can concretely offer in fields such as the economy.”

(Photo: CO.RE.IS Vice President Imam Yahya Pallavicini/CO.RE.IS)

CO.RE.IS says it is not using Caritas in Veritate to call for Islamic law in Western countries, but for an appreciation of religious views also inherent in Islam:

“Rather than implement parts of the sharîa within the current economic order, it is actually a matter of asking legislators to consider with due attention the contribution that economists, financial experts, technical advisors and those knowledgeable in Islam could give for a wider vision of the problems connected to the process of globalisation and governance. It is, therefore, not a matter of inserting Islamic rules into a world that could never entirely be Muslim but to benefit also from the knowledge found in the Islamic perspective on the economy.”

The document argued that an Islam understood according to its true principles and not through the extreme versions often presented by radicals had a contribution to make to the current economic discussion.

“Islam far from any fundamentalist distortions can offer something more, a vision that is not merely ‘moral’, founded on principles of equality and of the search for good for all humanity, and principles that go beyond the simple material plane… “

Therefore, as the pope says, the laws have to create boundaries for an anarchic economy… It is equally important to refer to the supra-personal Truth of God and of his Doctrine of Revelation, beyond any empty formalism: ‘Caritas’ yes but ‘in Veritate’.'Without sincere intentions, the very same Islamic model could in fact risk being manipulated and become counterproductive. The demand by certain radical movements to reinstate an alleged Islamic ‘neo-caliphate’ is extremely far from the true orthodoxy founded on the acceptance of reality as a manifestation of the divine Will and on the intelligence of being able to adapt the eternal spiritual principles to the various eras and continuously evolving situations…

(Photo: Muslims pray at Rome’s mosque, 16 Sept 2008/Chris Helgren)

“We Italian and European Muslims are fully aware of the fact that humanity today needs a new approach to face the challenges of an increasingly globalised and impersonal world, and we fully share the pontiff’s call to not passively accept the globalisation phenomenon, but to maintain our responsibilities even when the impersonal markets give the illusion that the sincerity of intentions can be left to one side.”

Do you think there are parallels between the economic and social teaching of Catholicism and Islam?

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Pope Benedict’s encyclical “Charity in Truth” proposed a sweeping reform of the world economic system from one based on the profit motive to one based on solidarity and concern for the common good. Like other such documents in the Roman Catholic Church’s social teaching tradition, the encyclical delivers a strong critique of unbridled capitalism. This can be uncomfortable for Catholics who champion free enterprise and some conservative Catholic writers reacted quickly and critically. One of them, George Weigel, wrote the encyclical “resembles a duck-billed platypus.”

(Image: Charity in Truth/Ignatius Press)

We wanted to hear the views of a Catholic executive, one who’s involved in business rather than reacting from the sidelines. So I called Frank Keating, president and chief executive officer of the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI). The former Republican governor of Oklahoma (1995-2003) is a former chairman of the National Catholic Review Board, which he said “sought to identify and correct the horror of sexual abuse on the part of the clergy.” He is a Knight of Malta and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.

DB: What’s your overall reaction to the encyclical?

FK:“I haven’t read the 30,000 words but I think what the pope is proposing is not inconsistent with other papal messages. The common denominator to all of them is the worth of the individual, the dignity of every human person. So Benedict XVI focuses on the right to life, he speaks against euthanasia, he speaks against the evil of abortion, he speaks against cloning. But at the same time he talks about duties and responsibilities to the vulnerable because the vulnerable are dignified human beings as well as those who are rich and powerful.

(Photo: Frank Keating, 11 Feb 2002/Adrees Latif)

“So to exploit someone in a capitalist society is, according to Benedict, inapropriate and contrary to Catholic moral teaching. But for me as a free market capitalist, I see in this statement also the right for me to determine my destiny. In other words, if I wish to work for the state I should be able to do so. If I wish to found a small business, I should be able to do so. A dignified, independent mortal soul, a caring individual should be able to determine their own destiny.

“There is a little bit for the left, support for unions, support for protection of the globe against waste, but there is also something I think for the free market advocates in the Church, because if you are an independent creature with a unique personality based upon, obviously, the immortality of your soul, you should be able to work or not work as your decision. I think there is a little bit for everyone.”

DB: What do you think about Benedict’s call for a “world political authority” to manage the global economy?

FK: “I think it is impractical to suggest that sovereign nations will surrender on the one hand a free market economy or on the other hand a socialist economy or completely managed or disintigrating economy as you would have for example in a place like Zimbabwe, or places like that which are utterly dysfunctional. I don’t think he would suggest that those economies that work surrender what works to those that don’t work and be managed by some supernational group that would impoverish everybody. I think what he’s talking about.

“As a result of the impoverishment of reckless lending, the impoverishment of a number of individuals throughout the globe, you are going to have far more coordination, and that is good. There is a difference between coordination and mandate. Look at Solvency II or (the Bank for International Settlements in) Basel. All that stuff, coordinating banks, coordinating insurance companies and the practices, lending standards and the like. I think you’ll see more coordination and, to the extent that that can be done, it will be healthy for everyone. A reckless loan in the United States can and did impoverish people in Latvia. So obviously coordination is important as long as it is not mandated.

(Photo: Bank for International Settlements, 8 July 1997/stringer)

“I see ‘world political authority’ … (and) ‘manage the global economy’ (in the Reuters report). If it said to coordinate decision making in the global economy, I think there would be less concern. But again it was probably written in Latin.

“Here’s a quote: ‘The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way.” Well, some men certainly have done that. I don’t think there is any question about that. I think his comments are not inappropriate.

“I think this is also for any of us, whether we are Catholics or not, to have the pope say ‘Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.’ Well, I don’t disagree with that. I think to raise this crisis to an international debate and emphasise the moral issues involved, and the ethical issues involved, is totally appropriate.”

DB: Will this encyclical change the way you run the ACLI?

FK: “Our products are protection products against calamity. Whether your house burns down and you have inadequate resources to rebuild it, property/casualty insurance saves you. Or your business partner dies or your spouse dies, life insurance provides the money to get back on your feet. I would argue there is a moral purpose there in pooling risk to help other people.

“But in the pope’s case, to talk about moral responsibility, duties to others, I think Bernard Madoff is the poster boy for that. Because here is a man, as you know, who betrayed and destroyed his own faith community, those within his own faith community. So I think for men and women in business and finance and government for that matter, I think the Pope’s message is one to listen to and to listen to carefully.”

(Photo: Bernard Madoff, 17 Dec 2008/Shannon Stapleton)

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Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, a member of Japan’s tiny Roman Catholic minority, had a chance toenjoy some time away from political trouble at home when he met with Pope Benedict on Tuesday.

As his first stop during a trip to attend July 8-10 summit of G8 leaders in Italy, Aso went to the Vatican, gave the pope a Sony digital video camera and discussed the global economic crisis with him.

(Photo: Prime Minister Aso presents video camera to Pope Benedict, 7 July 2009/Danilo Schiavella)

His visit was timely in that respect — Benedict published an encyclical on economic and social issues today, calling for a bold reform of the world economic order to overcome the financial crisis and redirect the focus of business to the welfare of all people.

Aso, the first Japanese prime minister to meet a pope in 10 years, told Benedict that Japan wanted to cooperate with the Vatican, according to his aides. According to the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, the two men had a cordial discussion that “touched on current international issues such as the economic crisis and the commitment of Japan and the Holy See to Africa. On the bilateral level, the good relations between Japan and the Holy See were noted.”

(Photo: Aso and Benedict in the papal private library, 7 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

For the unpopular prime minister, who looks set to lose a general election due by October, meeting Pope Benedict was probably a personal highlight of his trip, even though voters would not care much.

Aso is having a tough time at home with his support falling on doubts about his leadership abilities and the main opposition party has a good shot at ending more than a half-century of almost unbroken rule by Aso’s business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party.

Pope Benedict told Aso that he was happy to meet a Japanese prime minister who is Catholic and to know that Japan’s society is open to various religions.

Aso himself has little difficulty with mixing and matching various faiths. As we’ve mentioned here in an earlier post, he regularly pays respect and offers gifts to Shinto shrines, such as Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead. Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto is polytheistic and combining that with Christian monotherism may sound like a contradiction, but it is something many Japanese Catholics take in their stride.

Whether visits to Yasukuni shrine overstep the boundaries of Catholic doctrine is a difficult question, but Aso and the pope did not touch the issue at the 25-minute meeting, according to a statements released after the talk.

(Image: Aso meeting at bottom of front page of L’Osservatore Romano edition of 8 July 2009)

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Pope Benedict issued an ambitious call to reform the way the world works on Tuesday shortly before its most powerful leaders meet at the G8 summit in Italy. His latest encyclical, entitled “Charity in Truth,” presents a long list of steps he thinks are needed to overcome the financial crisis and shift economic activity from the profit motive to a goal of solidarity of all people.

Following are some of his proposals. The italics are from the original text. Do you think they are realistic food for thought or idealistic notions with no hope of being put into practice?

• “There is urgent need of a true world political authority. .. to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration… such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”
• The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly - not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred…”
• “Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity, so as not to abuse the sophisticated instruments which can serve to betray the interests of savers. Right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another.”
• “Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value… there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference… What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit, without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement, in suitable and appropriate ways, of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development.”
• “One possible approach to development aid would be to apply effectively what is known as fiscal subsidiarity, allowing citizens to decide how to allocate a portion of the taxes they pay to the State.”

(Photo: Pope Bendict, 1 July 2009/Tony Gentile)

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In a column last week, I noted how Nicolas Sarkozy was a master at signalling left while turning right. Well, in his keynote address to both houses of parliament today, the conservative president went a step further. He summoned up the burqa to camouflage his real intention — relaunching a drive to reform France’s ossified social, education and tax system.

(Photo: President Sarkozy delivers his speech, 22 June 2009/Pool)

By declaring war on the all-enveloping full-length veil worn by only a tiny minority of Muslim women in France, Sarkozy ensured that his secularist assault on religious fundamentalism would grab the headlines, and dominate intellectual debate. Here’s what he said:

The issue of the burqa is not a religious issue, it is a question of freedom and of women’s dignity. The burqa is not a religious symbol, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic. We cannot accept women in cages, amputated of all dignity, on French soil.

Sarkozy did not call outright for a ban on the burqa, leaving it to parliament to decide. French lawmakers have already called for an inquiry into the wearing of the burqa, which covers the face totally, and the niqab, which covers all but the eyes. But the aim was clear —  to distract attention from less crowd-pleasing but more significant proposals to ease taxes on labour and production, raise a big loan from the public to finance key spending priorities, slim down France’s bloated regional and local government and debate raising the legal retirement age.

The day after the budget minister admitted that the public sector deficit will hit more than 7 percent of Gross Domestic Product this year and next because of the impact of the financial crisis and the expect surge in unemployment, the burqa may not seem like the country’s biggest problem.  So why has Sarkozy chosen to shine a spotlight on it?

(Photo: Woman in burqa in Kabul, 9 March 2009/Omar Sobhani)

Some may see it partly as a response to Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, in which the U.S. president reached out to the Islamic world and criticised restrictions on Muslim dress in Western countries. Others will think Sarkozy was pandering to populist anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment in France, as he did to recapture voters from the extreme-right National Front in the 2007 presidential election. He reprised that tactic by highlighting his outspoken opposition to Turkey’s bid to join the European Union in the run-up to this month’s European Parliament elections.

Sarkozy can be sure of support from militant secularists on the left and right of French politics, just as ex-President Jacques Chirac was when he pushed through a law in 2004 barring the wearing of Muslim headscarves (and other conspicuous religious symbols) in schools. But does this secondary social issue really require legislation at all? And is it what French people should be focusing on in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the 1930s?

Perhaps Sarkozy needs such a distraction, alongside his crypto-Marxist denunciation of unbridled globalisation and financial capitalism, to disguise his reforming intent, given the strength of entrenched resistance to change in France. But the risk is that the French, when they watch a few soundbites on television, will remember the burqa and neglect the uncomfortable home truths the president told about the country’s failure to modernise its labour market, schools, universities and pension system. In a key passage on the need to bring down soaring debts and deficits while investing in the future, Sarkozy asked a striking question:

How come we have such a problem in preparing for the future. How have we fallen so far behind?

Let’s hope the French people and their lawmakers focus more on that question in response to the crisis than on banning the burqa.

The howls of protest against fat cat bonuses during this financial crisis stem from a deep-seated source of moral outrage. For many people, it just seems like common sense that it’s unfair for Wall Street executives to reward  themselves for creating the mess robbing millions of their savings.

(Photos: Protest outside Goldman Sachs in New York, 19 March 2009/Eric Thayer)

Evolutionary biologists and social psychologists believe this moral sense is innate, an instinct for cooperation and fairness that has been honed over millions of years of natural selection into a universal moral grammar that gives us a “gut feeling” about ethical dilemmas.

If we have this moral instinct, it would seem natural for politicians to appeal to it. Some are doing that, while others seem to be missing the mark. The news over the weekend from the United States and France shows the two different approaches in action.

In the U.S., President Barack Obama — a man who knows how to speak movingly about justice and values — is coming under fire for not rising to the challenge with an appeal to higher motives. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman took him to task on Saturday:

“We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle…

“President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified… Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it…

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.”  … Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

In France, from where I’m watching all this, the government has been openly talking in moral terms for months. Back in September, when the crisis really hit, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the end of “a financial capitalism that had imposed its logic on the whole economy and contributed to perverting it. The idea of the absolute power of the markets that should not be constrained by any rule, by any political intervention was a mad idea. The idea that markets are always right was a mad idea.”

(Photo: President Sarkozy speaks in Toulon, 25 Sept 2008/Jean-Paul Pelissier)

A month later, he said that crisis aid for banks, which totalled 10.5 billion euros in 2008, meant that bankers had had entered into “a moral pact” with the nation to fight the financial crisis together. “Today, everyone has to live up to his responsibilities. There is a moral pact.” When the large bank Société Générale, which got 1.7 billion of those euros in aid, decided last week to award its four top executives with a total of 350,000 stock options, Sarkozy called that a scandal.

In one of the best sound bites of the season, Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said “It’s about time that Société Générale rhymes a bit more with ‘intérêt général’” (the general or public interest). This speaks directly to the disgruntled voters’ feeling that big bonuses and stock options right now violate the common good.  She also threatened legal action to regulate executive pay if the companies wouldn’t do it themselves.  SocGen got the message and its executives gave up the stock options within hours of Lagarde’s comments on French radio.

(Photo: Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, 6 Nov 2008/Benoit Tessier)

For an excellent discussion of the ethical aspect of this crisis, take a look at this opinion piece — “Morals: the one thing markets don’t make” –by Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. In it, he bemoans “the gradual disappearance of the cluster of principles that went by the name of morality. Whatever its source - religion, conscience, custom or code - it meant that there are certain things you don’t do because they are not done. You don’t reward yourself when customers, clients or shareholders or employees are suffering losses. You don’t pay yourself out of all proportion to what you pay others. You don’t take advantage of your position just because you can. You are guided, even if no one is watching, by a sense of what is responsible and right. Without that internalised code of honour and trust, no institution can be sustained in the long run.”

What do you think about the role of moral principles in this crisis? Is Sacks right to saw no institution can survive in the long run without a moral code that no law can lay down?

With the financial crisis erupting around the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Protestant theologian John Calvin, many people in the Netherlands — where his thinking played an important role in forming the local culture — are looking back at his influence and what he might say of the current crisis and the people involved.

(Photo: Dutch Old Masters used skulls and stubby candles to portray the Calvinist idea of the vanity of greed/Robin van Lonkhuijsen/United Photos)

Several of the issues are described in my feature “Moral rebound finds Dutch exploring Calvin.” One of the most interesting elements was an online survey by the Protestant newspaper Trouw called “C-Factor.”

“Test how Calvinist you are, in your convictions, at work and in your love life,” it said in its challenge to readers. It asks 25 questions (sorry, only in Dutch) such as:

“I should really work harder.”

“Making exceptions to rules weakens the rules.”

” I like to dine in luxury.”

“Other people are more important than me.”

“I borrow money for nice things even when I don’t really need them.”

Tests like this are amusing, but you have to wonder about the results. A Dutch reporter in our Amsterdam bureau, who grew up in the Dutch “Bible Belt” and went to a high school in Kampen named after Calvin, got an unexpected 47 percent. A Catholic colleague with a solid Jesuit education got 58 percent. I’m a Brit with no links to Calvinism in my background, and I ended up scoring 75 percent.

Have you ever taken these “test your religion” tests? Were you surprised?

Bankers, auditors, money-market speculators and regulators all came in for criticism at the Church of England's General Synod during a discussion on the implications of the financial crisis and the recession.

The City had lined its pockets, regulators had not done their job properly and auditors had signed off financial deals that should not have seen the light of day, the synod heard at its meeting in London.

The result is a deep recession, the first since the early 1990s, with Britain suffering a shrinking economy, rapidly rising unemployment and falling output.

But the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, suggested everybody was to blame.

"We have all worshipped at the temple of money," he said. "We have been guilty of idolatry: the worship of God falsely conceived - which is deadlier than either heresy or sin, for it is the prolific source of each. It is this idolatrous love of money, pursuing profit without regard for ethic, risk or consequence, which has led us from orientation to dis-orientation."

He said the solution lay not only in economics and politics, but also a "deeper vision".

"It is not about what governments can do for us but what we can all do," he said.

Various suggestions were put forward by synod members, including working with counsellors, supporting credit unions, donating 10 percent of salary and opting for a gentler life.

They sympathised with the near 2 million unemployed and recognised that some of their own communities were still suffering from the economic downturn of the 1980s, with generations of families still unable to find work.

But the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, while empathising with the 150,000 people in his diocese who are likely to lose their jobs, said some may feel relief from being made redundant.

"It is difficult to know whether to sympathise more with those who have lost their jobs or those who are left carrying even greater loads with higher targets and fewer colleagues," he said. "Sometimes indeed people seem to be relieved to get off the treadmill and to be given an opportunity to reconsider what they really want out of life.

"One of the great implications of this turbulence for us is to re-boot our sense of what a truly flourishing human life consists of. The Crack-berry culture is dangerously addictive and coming off is notoriously difficult."

The comments were less strident than those made since the onslaught of the financial crisis.

Sentamu in September had accused short-sellers, those who speculate on falling share prices, of being "bank robbers and asset strippers". While the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in December said the credit crunch was a reality check, a reminder that "fairy gold is just that".

He also criticised the government's fiscal stimulus package, likening it to "an addict returning to a drug".

But there were still criticism from synod members.

"It is very ironic that we have got to the point now where we have massively bailed out big banks, and bailed out car manufacturers in the States doing to them what we have not done for many nations in the Third World," the Bishop of Durham, Thomas Wright, said.

"We are in severe danger of the very rich doing to the very rich what they have failed to do for the very poor, and that is shameful."

But not everybody was angry with the financiers.

Susan Cooper, from the London diocese, said she was "a little disconcerted" by some of the comments.

"These are people too alongside the rest of us and they do not need vilifying at this stage. Some of them are members of our congregations," she said.

Of all the denunciations of greed coming from the pulpits in this financial crisis, few have had as much sting as the attack that Bishop Wolfgang Huber of Berlin delivered just before Christmas. Huber, who as council chairman of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) is the country’s top Protestant prelate, singled out the head of the biggest German bank when he lambasted top financiers for their rush for profits.

(Photo: Bishop Wolfgang Huber, 5 Nov 2006/Alex Grimm)

Referring to Josef Ackermann, he told the Berliner Zeitung that he hoped “a Deutsche Bank chief executive should never again set a profit goal of 25 per cent.” Such goals fuelled excessive profit expectations and amounted to a form of idolatry, he said. “In these circumstances, money has become a god.”

The bank angrily rejected his criticism as “inappropriate.”

Now comes the news that Huber has apologised to Ackermann. “Since many have suspected I was personally attacking Mr Ackermann, I have apologised to him,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “The issue now is not to criticise a single person, it must be to discuss at length what led to this financial crisis. And what we must avoid, so as not to fall into equally destructive mechanisms again.”

Many religious leaders’ comments about the crisis seemed a bit tame considering all the damage it’s done and the way few if any business leaders have accepted any blame. At least Huber was clear. Was his comment really over the top? Are critics not allowed to single out prominent business leaders who they think contributed to this mess?

(Photo: Josef Ackermann, 17 Nov 2008/Kai Pfaffenbach)