What’s Wrong with the World

Buiter with his half-facetious steps toward a vast cancellation of usurious debt, biblical in scope, may be signifying some breaking of the ice. Maybe.

I sure hope so. Although the Catholic Church was right to expand the scope of approved "extrinsic titles" to interest by the 19th century, the fact remains that her basic doctrine about usury, defined by the 13th century, is true. We have ignored it at great cost not only to the poor, but to all.

A jubilee is not enough. What we need is a wholesale deregulation and decentralization of the banking system. A jubilee can only be the first prong of the attack. It must be followed up by encouraging the market to swell with small banks and credit unions so that there is massive competition over interest rates and features.

And thus do Catholics (*as* Catholics), once again, give cover to leftism and all the injustice which naturally follows.

The breaking of ice continues. Benedict XVI states in Caritas In Veritate that meaningful and just structural reforms can only occur after personal conversion and a change in our cultural and economic assumptions;

The Church's social doctrine has always maintained that justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs. Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence... ...Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics, and what is more, it needs works redolent of the spirit of gift... ...Charity in truth, in this case, requires that shape and structure be given to those types of economic initiative which, without rejecting profit, aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents, of profit as an end in itself... ...Today's international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise...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.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-v

Economic life undoubtedly requires contracts, in order to regulate relations of exchange between goods of equivalent value. But it also needs just laws and forms of redistribution governed by politics

I'm sure he's thinking that he's arguing for something other than socialism here, but redistribution of wealth by politics invariably leads to socialism and societal corruption.

Maybe one of these days the Pope will have it in him to condemn the way that Western productive classes are nearly taxed into the ground so that politicians can use their wealth to buy bread and circus for the masses.

Personally, I am sick of all of the talk about the "poor" in the United States. America has very little poverty by international standards. What we call poverty is a high quality of life by the standards of a very large percentage of humanity.

LONDON (Catholic Online) – Pope Benedict XVI is working on a new encyclical that will condemn tax evasion as “socially unjust” and will denounce the use of “tax havens” and offshore bank accounts by wealthy individuals to avoid taxes owed.

In a article published the Times of London dated Aug. 10, Richard Owen, quoting Vatican sources, reported that the pope’s second encylical will focus on social and economic problems facing mankind in an era of globalization.

He will argue, the Times said, that tax shelters that seek to illegitimately limit the amount of taxes paid and the non-payment of taxes reduces tax revenues that benefit of society as a whole and shift the burden to those less able to afford it.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=25018

Funny thing is, you look at the federal budget and a large percentage of the budget is simply waste. Most of the money we spent in Iraq wasn't military spending, but "hearts and mind" crap that was a big handout to Halliburton and KBR. A large portion of the federal transportation budget was fraud, waste and abuse (FWA). The farm subsidies, most of which go to big agribusiness are FWA. The prescription drug package for medicare was a handout to large companies like GM which are now health care providers with a private business interest on the side; again, FWA. Earmarks are rampant and generally a perfect example of FWA. A large number of elderly citizens who don't need Social Security because they have other pensions or retirement assets still receive it, making the system more burdensome for the young and productive; again, FWA.

One could not help but think that the Pope honestly doesn't give a rodent's posterior about the massive waste in modern government, most of which can only be called "the public good" using an incredibly left-wing view of society.

***(Last point, I don't mean this as a threadjacking since these points are related to Kevin's comment, which is related to your post.)

The Roman Catholic Church should unconditionally condemn redistributist policies because charity is a key role of the Christian church. The RCC is supporting its most dangerous competition, the secular state, whenever it approves of welfare spending. The welfare state was always intended to undermine the ministries which tend to the needy, and what's worse, welfare state policies give the poor a means of meeting their material needs without ever having their spiritual ones addressed.

I haven't read every word Mike T has said, but I am in general with him from what I have read. I think this "debt forgiveness" idea is a poor one. What always kills me in these things is the faux compassion that blames whomever is perceived as "the big guy" and asks him to let "the little guy" go on getting something for nothing. This is scarcely beneficial either to the character or to the economic habits of "the little guy." Btw, did the "redistribution" phrase come from the Pope's piece?

B16 may very well be appealing to traditional Catholic social teaching if by "redistribution" he means something along the lines of Chesterton & Belloc's distributism, which isn't socialism.

B16 may very well be appealing to traditional Catholic social teaching if by "redistribution" he means something along the lines of Chesterton & Belloc's distributism, which isn't socialism.

I don't think there would be much of a difference in practice. I remember seeing something where Chesterton said more capitalism results in fewer capitalists, and if he truly believed that, then I think Chesterton was perhaps not as economically perceptive as claimed. That may have been true as practiced in Europe, but laissez faire capitalism in the United States, despite its problem, resulted in a lot of opportunities for enterprising people. So much so that big corporations in the time of Teddy Roosevelt began to eagerly support regulation because regulatory compliance costs tend to cripple small competitors.

I think the main criticism that people from certain traditions have with Capitalism is that those who get left behind often deserve it. Many Christians don't appreciate how much social welfare policies and such go against the critical new testament teaching regarding charity and assistance to the poor, "they that shall not work, shall not eat." The fairest economic system is one in which those who won't work will invariably die, not be caught by any sort of safety net or be protected by public policies.

Lydia,

The reason I am sympathetic to the idea of a jubilee is that many banks were thick as thieves with the politicians who made the last several bubbles happen. The smaller institutions like community banks should be explicitly exempted from such a deal, since they usually didn't participate in those scams, but I would shed no tears for Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae, Bank of America, etc. if they collapsed after such a deal because their ruthless manipulation of the market through their connections in the political system has damaged the economy so much.

Vox Day actually has a good point when he (only half sarcastically) calls Goldman Sachs a serious threat to our national security based on the level of pull they have in the federal government and how they have used that to create several major bubbles that have damaged the US economy.

Folks, let's also keep in mind the vast redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to bankers that has already been effected. Our banking sector has been socialized; it is probable that shadow banking itself could not have developed absent the already bulky presence of government intervention; it is probable, in other words, that banking as we have known it was been founded upon the assumption of too big to fail, was socialized, off at the end, already.

It many ways shadow banking was just regulatory arbitrage -- Wall Street need non-bank institutions with huge balance sheets to gobble up all these newly-manufactured credit risk instruments. If you can buy a mortgage bond, and then immediately contract with AIG or GE to shift the risk off your books, why to all regulatory appearances the risk is gone. But was new economic value ever created? Doubful.

That's usury.

Maybe one of these days the Pope will have it in him to condemn the way that Western productive classes are nearly taxed into the ground

Can you expand on what you mean by productive classes? Do you mean the guys who garnered fabulous wealth as private equity specialists? They would use a target company's own balance sheet as the means to acquiring it and saddle it with debt in the process. Productive? Are CFO's focused on the next earnings release, "shareholder value" and beating Street estimates being genuinely productive in the long-term?

Without doubt, one of the greatest risks for businesses is that they are almost exclusively answerable to their investors, thereby limiting their social value. Owing to their growth in scale and the need for more and more capital, it is becoming increasingly rare for business enterprises to be in the hands of a stable director who feels responsible in the long term, not just the short term, for the life and the results of his company...

The RCC is supporting its most dangerous competition, the secular state

The link was provided so you could read it before firing off worn-out platitudes and the false choices that dominate our politics. I also know not everyone decided to work from home so they can savor the document, but please take the time to study some of it before responding.

The exclusively binary model of market-plus-State is corrosive of society, while economic forms based on solidarity, which find their natural home in civil society without being restricted to it, build up society. The market of gratuitousness does not exist, and attitudes of gratuitousness cannot be established by law. Yet both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift.

Mike T:

You refer, I believe, to Chesterton's argument that on a strictly materialist calculus, the Capitalist's object is to achieve monopoly. He wants to corner a market utterly and removal all competition. From this perspective the pure operation of Capitalism will result in fewer and fewer capitalists.

A contemporary example might be made of Walmart recently endorsing single-paying socialized medicine, on the grounds that it will weaken Walmart's smaller competitors, thus giving Walmart a larger market share.

My response to Chesterton would simply be to point out that a Capitalism which operates under a more equitable structure of law and liberty -- a Capitalism made subject to ethical considerations outside that strict materialist calculus -- need not result in fewer capitalists; and indeed that this has happened before, perhaps most dramatically in America.

So I take your point, but I think you are being unfair to Chesterton.

link to Benedict's encyclical

(I don't think yours was working, Kevin.)

Sorry Paul and sorry Mike T if you couldn't access it. So much to ponder, like this gem:

Often the development of peoples is considered a matter of financial engineering, the freeing up of markets, the removal of tariffs, investment in production, and institutional reforms — in other words, a purely technical matter. All these factors are of great importance, but we have to ask why technical choices made thus far have yielded rather mixed results. We need to think hard about the cause. Development will never be fully guaranteed through automatic or impersonal forces, whether they derive from the market or from international politics. Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the requirements of the common good.

You refer, I believe, to Chesterton's argument that on a strictly materialist calculus, the Capitalist's object is to achieve monopoly. He wants to corner a market utterly and removal all competition. From this perspective the pure operation of Capitalism will result in fewer and fewer capitalists.

A case can be made for prohibiting certain practices like price dumping, but in general the market is not friendly to monopolists. Once they take over a market for a while, they tend to become grossly inefficient. Microsoft lost its position as the de facto monopoly for browsers and operating systems by becoming complacent. Today, Firefox and WebKit-based browsers like Safari and Chrome are gutting its presence in that key market.

A contemporary example might be made of Walmart recently endorsing single-paying socialized medicine, on the grounds that it will weaken Walmart's smaller competitors, thus giving Walmart a larger market share.

While that may be their behavior, it is important to remember that Capitalist theory does assume a willingness on the part of the public to deny businesses what their lobbyists want in these matters.

Can you expand on what you mean by productive classes?

Entrepreneurs, skilled workers (tradesmen, engineers, etc.) and angle investors, primarily.

Capitalist theory does assume a willingness on the part of the public to deny businesses what their lobbyists want in these matters.

Good, so we agree a strong, independent juridicial framework is needed.

Entrepreneurs, skilled workers (tradesmen, engineers, etc.) and angle investors, primarily.

Ah, and those absent from your list must belong to the parasitic classes, I guess.

Is an entrepreneur who outsources his work force to Malayasia and sets up an offshore tax haven to avoid the economic and social consequences that follow the "lay offs", being productive, let alone Christian?

I intend to do a post on Caritas in Veritate once I've read the whole thing. In the meantime, some observations pertinent to this thread.

What I've seen of the encyclical so far is quite in line with how Catholic social teaching has been developing since Leo XII's Rerum Novarum (1891). By endorsing private property and the pursuit of profit, it is friendly to capitalism and needs no defense around here. But it also insists on conditioning those goods by such principles as "the universal destination of goods," "solidarity," and "the preferential option for the poor." Seen as moral injunctions for the faithful, those are not controversial in general. Most of the debate about the political application of Church social teaching is over the extent to which those conditioning principles require state intervention. On that question, the political (and theological) Left is generally maximalist; the political (and theological) Right is generally minimalist.

As a rightist in the American sense of the term, I come down mostly with the minimalists. So, I am quite sympathetic with what Lydia and Mike T have said above. Thus I believe that the principle of "subsidiarity" calls for private rather than public solutions when the former are feasible. From a theological standpoint, though, the question whether to be a political minimalist or a political maximalist is a matter of prudential judgment, rather than doctrine, about what's "feasible." It really comes down to the question how to balance, in practice, the principles "conditioning" the goods of private property and profit with additional principles such as "subsidiarity." Rome generally leaves that question to opinion. For the social teaching of the Church is logically compatible with a rather broad range of prudential judgments about it.

In fact, what conservative critics of the Church's social teaching often fail to realize is that, when seen as a whole, it is probably more unpalatable to the Left than to the Right. Catholics who are politically liberal generally approve Church teachings on, e.g., the death penalty, health care, and the treatment of immigrants, and want them enshrined in secular legislation; but on abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex "marriage," the song changes dramatically. True, the converse holds among many Catholics who are politically conservative; but in my view, the conservatives hold the theologically stronger position. As Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute notes:

It is quite a spectacle to see Catholic progressives — who in other circumstances contort themselves into exegetical pretzels when they want to undermine clear, emphatic, authoritative, and repeated magisterial prohibitions on same-sex relations, female “priests,” and contraceptive acts — morph into virtual Ultramontanists on prudential matters such as the precise level of a minimum wage.

The trouble with the Catholic Left is that generally presents as binding on the conscience of Catholics certain political proposals which, from Rome's standpoint, are really matters of opinion, and presents as matters of opinion certain political proposals which, again from Rome's standpoint, are binding. So Church social teaching is more easily reconciled with American "conservatism," or at least with some strains thereof, then with American "liberalism."

But in some cases, applying the Left-Right dichotomy is simply unilluminating. The "usury crisis" Paul has described is a good example. Although people can debate from now till doomsday how much state regulation of debt instruments is wise, it cannot be denied either (a) that some degree of regulation is necessary, and (b) that the explosion of public and private debt, all slated to be repaid with interest, has been bad for everybody. Ignoring the traditional moral strictures of the Church about debt and interest fosters a systemic greed which is eventually self-defeating. We are now in a situation where essentially bankrupt governments are shoring up bankrupt sectors of the economy with funny money that will burden the next generation and beyond with unsustainable debt. That wouldn't have been necessary if both the private and public sectors hadn't reduced themselves to pigs feeding at the trough. Because both private and public greed have driven this crisis, it's really not a Left-Right issue. It's a rather elementary moral issue.

Kevin, the tax burden on small businesses employing people in real communities to do real productive work, is not something to be sneered at. Large corporations with access to the state-backed capital markets are doing fine, but small enterprise is getting hammered from both sides -- from the retrenchment of banks and other sources of capital, and from the accretion of new taxes from various levels of government virtually every week. That's a shame.

Ah, and those absent from your list must belong to the parasitic classes, I guess.

Not if you notice the qualification at the end of my list. I don't regard all government work as parasitic. I also regard a lot of not-for-profits to be parasitic since they exist for nebulous roles like "raising awareness" and "advocacy" in ways that usually demand more government.

Is an entrepreneur who outsources his work force to Malayasia and sets up an offshore tax haven to avoid the economic and social consequences that follow the "lay offs", being productive, let alone Christian?

Productive? Sure. Christian? That's between him and God. Suppose he is an entrepreneur in France and wants workers who will not only work a 40 hour work week (France is now down to a 35 hour week), but come in on the weekend if there is a major incident that requires their presence? Is it unreasonable for him to prefer workers who will actually earn their pay? I don't think it is.

Not all outsourcing is created the same. It may not be fair to outsource GM jobs to China where the wage goes from about $50k/hour plus benefits to $3/hour, but it is perfectly fair for Ford to contemplate killing off all of those union jobs by moving them to the South where they will go for about $20/hour plus benefits.

Kevin, the tax burden on small businesses employing people in real communities to do real productive work, is not something to be sneered at.

Agreed, Paul, I would call it tragic. And a consequence of the symbiotic relationship that exists between a "morally neutral" market and those seeking refuge in a deChristianized State.

When both the logic of the market and the logic of the State come to an agreement that each will continue to exercise a monopoly over its respective area of influence, in the long term much is lost: solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness, all of which stand in contrast with giving in order to acquire (the logic of exchange) and giving through duty (the logic of public obligation, imposed by State law).

Productive? Sure. Christian? That's between him and God.

That bizarre bifurcation between the businessman and disciple of Christ has to to be healed, or nothing else makes sense. The entrepreneur is a moral actor. The fact that you try to obscure that truth should tell you all you need to know about the core of your economic theories. They are reductionist and relativist fictions.

Remember that Chesterton's and Belloc's main beef was with industrial capitalism/corporate capitalism, not the "free market" per se. When they criticize 'capitalism' they're using that word primarily to mean big business. They and most other advocates of some version of what might be called 'small market capitalism' -- Schumacher, Roepke, W. Berry, etc. -- don't have a problem with the market, provided it functions within certain limits.

Kevin,

Additionally, with regard to outsourcing, there is an inherent conflict between the expectations of modern Americans and the reality of the economy. American workers expect ever-increasing wages without regard to the value that they create or what could be called the actual value of a job. There is no such thing as an objective value in economics, but there is a reasonable approximation of it, at least enough for understanding the issue of wages.

A burger flipper is simply never worth $20/hour, unless either the currency is highly inflated or they are freakishly productive. The most that they are "objectively worth" is $5/hour-$10/hour. In time, a senior burger flipper who takes on a management role over others may be worth $15/hour, but at some point, they cannot continue to raise their wages without exhausting the ratio of the value they bring to the reasonable pay for that job.

A lot of Americans have been living very, very high on the hog. The American auto workers are a perfect example. Their pay and benefits are so out of touch with reality that it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere took a swing at them. A key part of the reason that Japan has cleaned our clock in the auto industry is that their workers are paid much more in line with their value.

Now, do you think it's immoral for a company like Honda to outsource its labor to the market it serves? Most Hondas that are sold in the US are at the very least assembled by American workers in right to work states. It is my understanding that a lot of their production is actually moving to those states because it's cheaper to build the entire vehicle in a state like Georgia or Kentucky than to ship it all from Japan or build it in a pro-union state like Michigan.

That bizarre bifurcation between the businessman and disciple of Christ has to to be healed, or nothing else makes sense. The entrepreneur is a moral actor. The fact that you try to obscure that truth should tell you all you need to know about the core of your economic theories. They are reductionist and relativist fictions.

And once again, you completely ignored the rest of my comment to make a personal attack. Is that because I answered your question with more nuance than you could handle, or is it because you're just prone to ad hominems?

As I said, there are external factors that make it not as cut and dry as you would have us believe. Not the least of which is the nature of the labor market, and how he or she is choosing to outsource.

Again, as I said, there is difference between outsourcing to India from a country a country like France where workers won't even work a full 40 hour work week, and outsourcing to take a decent $20/hour manufacturing job into one that pays $5/day in a third world country. The first one is an entirely honest move, the latter, not so much. On the other hand, if it is logistically impossible to make a product in a cost-effective way using domestic labor, outsourcing is obviously necessarily.

Indeed, Rob. From the Church's standpoint, the best form of capitalism is one designed to make capitalists of the masses. That is why, as a conservative, I favor tax policies that foster ESOPs for large businesses as well as the formation of small businesses. I'm a big fan of "social entrepreneurship." But hardly anybody talks about that stuff. Most people are more interested in playing the political games defined by the MSM.

Mike T,
Your are ignoring the major issue between us; whether or not our economic choices are first and foremost moral ones. You seem to be dodging it while making the spiritual essence of economic life subordinate to concepts like comparative advantage. Clearly it is amoral at best if a company bases its decisions strictly on a barren mathematical formula.

By contrast, though, many far-sighted managers today are becoming increasingly aware of the profound links between their enterprise and the territory or territories in which it operates. Paul VI invited people to give serious attention to the damage that can be caused to one's home country by the transfer abroad of capital purely for personal advantage[95]. John Paul II taught that investment always has moral, as well as economic significance[96]. All this — it should be stressed — is still valid today, despite the fact that the capital market has been significantly liberalized, and modern technological thinking can suggest that investment is merely a technical act, not a human and ethical one.

Clearly it is amoral at best if a company bases its decisions strictly on a barren mathematical formula.

That is not inherently the case. If an entrepreneur cannot find capable workers who will work at a fair rate, he has no obligation to hire locally. Seriously, Kevin, if the average worker demanded twice what they're really worth, does the entrepreneur have a "moral obligation" to hire them for what they are definitely not worth rather than seeking more reasonable labor? I am not talking about taking a $50/hour UAW job and turning it into a $3/hour job in China, but rather taking a $50/hour UAW job and outsourcing it to South Carolina where workers would gladly take $20/hour?

Kevin,

Why is it that you pay no attention to the moral obligation of workers to not demand more pay and benefits than they are reasonably worth? Do workers not have just as much of an obligation to be fair in that regard, as employers have to not exploit their workers?

A lot of Americans have been living very, very high on the hog. The American auto workers are a perfect example. Their pay and benefits are so out of touch with reality that it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere took a swing at them.

Right, we are lost in a warped pursuit of consumption and self-gratification. Again, are you reading this encyclical at all? I would think you would be both impressed and challenged.

Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people's integral development.

Why is it that you pay no attention to the moral obligation of workers to not demand more pay and benefits than they are reasonably worth?

Mike T, one last time; read it and leave the straw-men out back until Halloween.

Right, we are lost in a warped pursuit of consumption and self-gratification. Again, are you reading this encyclical at all? I would think you would be both impressed and challenged.

I don't have much time to read it right now. I am merely addressing your points. How could you seriously think that I am addressing it, when I am only quoting your comments, and asking you pointed questions about what you're saying?

If an entrepreneur cannot find capable workers who will work at a fair rate, he has no obligation to hire locally.

Come on, Mike is that what labor arbitrage is primarily based on; a shortage of American workers willing to work at a "fair rate"? Really?

I did not say all economic choices are morally easy. I did say though that we better ditch the fantasy that work and economics operate in some fantastic sphere of moral neutrality, or greater ruin lies ahead.

Why such an understanding garners so much resistance from those at a Christian site is beyond me. The fact that both Left and Right will claim a papal benediction, while disregarding most of the text is a testament to how wracked we are by ideologies and systems.

How could you seriously think that I am addressing it, when I am only quoting your comments,

No, you are ignoring quotes taken directly from the encyclical, and trying to fit my comments within an argument that ignores the inherent spiritual nature of economic life.

I did not say all economic choices are morally easy. I did say though that we better ditch the fantasy that work and economics operate in some fantastic sphere of moral neutrality, or greater ruin lies ahead.

And as I implied, many of those moral matters, being so grey, will be between the entrepreneur and God. Only God can render an exact opinion on them.

Why such an understanding garners so much resistance from those at a Christian site is beyond me.

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas

The fact that both Left and Right will claim a papal benediction, while disregarding most of the text is a testament to how wracked we are by ideologies and systems.

I, for one, am not claiming it, in no small part because I have not read it and to claim it would be unfair to it.

No, you are ignoring quotes taken directly from the encyclical, and trying to fit my comments within an argument that ignores the inherent spiritual nature of economic life.

Unless you've been taking quotes from the encyclical and posting them as your own, then you've got some explaining to do. Perhaps you would like to post links to the specific arguments where I did that, and where I twisted those encyclical quotes.

All I have done is pointed out that you, in your personal comments, focus too much on capital and not enough on labor, and that most of these moral arguments are so grey that we cannot establish a cut-and-dry rule about when it is right and when it is wrong. It will almost invariably be subjective until you reach the extremes.

And as I implied, many of those moral matters, being so grey, will be between the entrepreneur and God. Only God can render an exact opinion on them.

Again, you are standing on the burning bridge of the status quo and refusing to really take up the issue. No system can claim to be both worthy of man and neutral or indifferent to his Creator.

B16 is offering an entirely different anthropology than that which under girds our current economics.

In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas

If Christians can't unite behind the essence of this encyclical, I wil wonder if they haven't found a church operating as an "ism" as being more hospitable.

All I have done is pointed out that you, in your personal comments, focus too much on capital and not enough on labor,

Another false dichotomy. The human person is central and the technical divisions are part of modernity's way of cutting us off from each other and Reality. The financier and the wage earner have mutual obligations, but globalization gives the former often a powerful weapon called mobility that is usually destructive.

And as I implied, many of those moral matters, being so grey, will be between the entrepreneur and God. Only God can render an exact opinion on them.

Indeed, much of the things and those responsible for our current economic crisis were largely 'grey'.

I mean, mortgage-backed securities, those infamous derivatives; heck, people responsible for devising such things and schemes -- only God can render judgment.

More to the point, who is anybody to render judgment on such inspirational, ambitious All-American financial giants like Madoff?

Only God could render an exact opinion on him, no?

Entrepreneurial pursuit should automatically render a person innocent until they pass from this life to the next whereupon only God can render just judgment.

Whoever attempts to do so here, while on earth, is not only foolish; they take the seat of the Almighty who alone can read their hearts!

Thus saith the Gospel According to Mike T!