Global Recession

DEPRIVE a person of oxygen and he will turn blue, collapse and eventually die. Deprive economies of credit and a similar process kicks in. As the financial crisis has broadened and intensified, the global economy has begun to suffocate. That is why the world’s central banks have been administering emergency measures, including a round of co-ordinated interest-rate cuts on Wednesday October 8th. With luck they will prevent catastrophe. They are unlikely to avert a global recession.
- “Bad or Worse,” The Economist, October 8, 2008 (accessed at http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12382253&source=features_box_main)

Yesterdays gospel reading (Matthew 22:15-22) with its injunction to give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God's, reminds us that humans are physical beings situated in a physical universe. The spiritual does not exist apart from the physical. Dismissing money as unimportant or dirty is an unrealistic, superficial approach to life. Money is the oxygen that keeps vital goods and services – bread, water, sewer, etc. – flowing. Religious leaders need the wisdom and expertise to provide informed and helpful reflections on the moral and spiritual dimensions of current economic issues.

The human capacity for greed, which one can define in terms of excessive selfishness and self-interest, means that unregulated or insufficiently regulated capitalism will always produce great injustice. The depression of the 1930s was, until this year, the most recent reminder of that truth in the United States. Conversely, the failed experiment in socialism reported in the book of Acts underscores the human community’s necessary reliance upon capitalistic economic structures. The challenge for a nation’s leaders, and its voters, is to devise a system that creatively balances, on the one hand, opportunity for individual initiative, creativity, labor, and reward with, on the other hand, safeguards to protect against exploitation and dishonesty and to ensure minimum standards of well-being for all.

In sum, ethics must precede and constantly inform economics. Substituting a false gospel of laissez-faire for the solid foundations of prudence and justice imperils our communal well-being.