Immoral? Illegal? Criminal?

This issue of Associate! highlights the relationship of finance to ethics. Seen historically, finance was never divorced from moral responsibility, witness the many and various customary moral precepts accompanying economic endeavour. The supervision of finance was undertaken originally by a priestly elite whose task it was to ensure that its effect was social - a fact now passing out of history. Even the idea of 'gentlemanly banking' is met with scepticism today. As various commentators have observed, the sluggish process of external regulation - the tail end of social morality determined by tradition or law - can never hope to constrain the perpetually self-inventing sophistication of finance which characterises today's world.

Paul Breslaw starts the discussion with his essay concerning financial criminality.This is followed by a text from Britain's Liberal-Democrats setting out their thoughts on financial reform. Now that they share power with the Tories it will be interesting to see how their aim to de-liberalise finance fares. In the case of Goldman Sachs executives, Sign of Our Time provides an instance of the 'who me?' attitude that many in finance profess.  In contrast, John Bloom offers a more positive view of how we can deepen our understanding of what stands behind 'financial' transactions, discovering there a 'spiritual' reality. Christopher Houghton Budd asks: Is the problem moral or criminal in any traditional, externally sense? Is it not, rather, consequent on two related phenomena today - the presence of too much capital in the world and the positivist foundation of modern economic behaviour generally, not only on Wall Street? Friends' Page opens a discussion on cycles and a book review on Common Wealth by Martin Large. Accounting Corner this month focuses on the part to be played by accounting in promoting Fair Dealing.