When God speaks, do bankers listen? Stephen Green
Before you watch the video interview below with banker Stephen Green, you may first want to read this rather hard hitting session with him late last year (“The New World Order ‘Is Already Underway'” Spiegel Online International, Dec 19, 2009). Just for a little context, I suggest this. And given that these days many of us are a touch cranky on the subject of bankers giving advice.
But considering that Green heads up one of the world’s largest banking groups, HSBC, and that he is also an ordained priest in the Church of England, and that he is also the author of a book titled “Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World” (2009), I wanted to listen to what he has to say.
The video excerpt here features an interview with Green in New York, in which he discusses social responsibility (“Market Fundamentalism: Whose Job Is It to Fix Capitalism?” Feb 2010). The interviewer is Vishakha Desai. Full interview here (1:12). From FORA.tv.
The term “democracy” is a very loose term for rule by the people. Generally the assumption is that this means the majority of the voters rule. The majority of the voters, of course, is not necessarily the majority of the people, or even of the majority of the people who would like to vote. In the US, early on we had restrictions on who could vote, such as landowners only. In addition, in the past there were poll taxes and written tests to qualify voters.
In political science terms, the concept is broken down in a number of ways. Suffice is to say, that the term is used loosely around the world. One party states may well consider themselves to be democracies, since they draw legitimacy from a large body of the people, however limited that body may be.
It is may be true that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand, but this is not necessarily the way it has to be. Capitalism could well exist with a high degree of anti-democratic government–in fact, such is often the case. Campaigns, open and free, are necessary to give democracy its full bloom. This is the key, and to the extent that capitalism provides support or restrictions on that factor, the complementarity rests.