During the testosterone-fuelled boom years, Christian faith was about surviving in the City, but since 2008 and the revelation that it was all built on sand, Christians have been saying unequivocally that the gospel is non-negotiable, that working in commerce isn’t about surviving as a Christian but about transforming the way we do business, that Christianity is disruptive of systemic greed and corruption: that, in short, their work serves their faith and not the other way round. They are converting markets, not just people. These are the new Power Christians.

Welby is their spiritual, as well as titular, leader. Born in 1956 into a privileged, if eccentric family, he has managed a tension between descent from a powerful Conservative dynasty (on his mother’s side, he is a scion of the Butler family, which gave us Rab Butler, the deputy prime minister to Harold Macmillan) and skeletons in the family cupboard (it was seen fit to conceal his paternal Jewish-immigrant lineage from him until he became an adult).

This background may have contributed to Welby the Outsider, part of the establishment but also a thorn in its side. It is no surprise that the relentlessly bourgeois HTB couldn’t contain him. Note that he considerably widened not only his social but his theological circle after he left the Knightsbridge church. Via Africa and the Middle East, he arrived as dean of Liverpool Cathedral, where he operated what he and Dr Williams have dubbed a “mixed economy” of traditions. Now add that eclecticism – one might even call it a catholic taste in denominations – to the can-do attitude of the City whizz-kid and you have someone who can tap effortlessly in to the energy of any kind of Christian witness....

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

European governments are figuring out that taxing financial transactions won't be a magical money machine and that the proposed levy might even damage the European economy.

Reuters first reported Thursday that EU officials are scaling back a transaction tax proposal supported by 11 countries that is supposed to take effect in January. The levy could instead be introduced on a "staggered basis," one official told the news agency. The first phase might only tax sales and purchases of shares, not bonds or derivatives transactions, and at 0.01% instead of 0.1% as currently proposed. A rate of zero is more appropriate.

Enthusiasm for the tax has been dimming for a while, including in governments that have previously backed it. Christian Noyer, the Governor of the Banque de France, said in Paris on Tuesday that the levy will raise "nothing at all." One unnamed EU official told Reuters that a scaled-back transaction tax would reap revenue of less than €3.5 billion. The full-fledged levy, as proposed by the European Commission in February, was supposed to rake in €31 billion a year.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Euro • Stock Market • Taxes • The Banking System/Sector • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010

European countries plan to scale back a proposed financial transactions tax drastically, initially imposing a tiny charge on share deals only and taking much longer than originally intended to achieve a full roll-out.

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There is no evidence that an FTT would moderate market volatility — and attenuate sudden shifts of mood on financial markets.

A recent report by Anna Pomeranets from the Bank of Canada concluded that there have been instances when an FTT led to an increase in volatility — most significantly on the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, between 1932 and 1981, where increases in the FTT were associated with rising volatility, increased bid-ask spreads, and lower trading volumes.

Similarly, the idea that capital is under-taxed in current tax regimes is mistaken.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/052913-658027-financial-transaction-tax-in-europe-will-not-raise-much-money-and-may-hurt-growth.htm#ixzz2UmJX6SiT
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A U.S. economy that was supposed to be barely hanging on is starting to look surprisingly robust.

Housing prices rose faster over the past year than they have in the past seven, according to data out Tuesday. Consumer confidence hit its highest level in five years. The stock market rallied another 0.6 percent as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500, leaving it just short of an all-time high reached last week. And the national retail price of gasoline fell for six days straight through Monday and is down 16 cents a gallon since late February.

It adds up to this reality: In a year when tax increases and spending cuts by the federal government were expected to bleed life out of the economy, the strengthening housing and financial markets are proving to be more powerful than acts of Congress.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The U.S. Government • Federal Reserve • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • Senate

Employers kept hiring at a steady pace in April and the government revised up job tallies for February and March, easing fears that the economy is tumbling into a spring slump and propelling blue-chip stocks to record highs.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 last month and the jobless rate ticked down to 7.5%, the lowest level since December 2008. The Labor Department also significantly raised hiring estimates for the two prior months, by a combined 114,000 jobs.

But the job gains in April, which were tilted toward the retail and business-services sectors, come alongside mixed signals for the economy almost four years into the recovery. While the housing and auto sectors are accelerating after years of industry turmoil, other major sectors are showing signs of trouble. In short: The Federal Reserve is looking for more broad-based and sustained job growth before easing up on its easy-money policies.

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Justin Welby, the new leader of nearly 80m Anglicans around the world, has won a respectful hearing for his ideas on banking and the British economy. Even if they disagree with the details, people have generally not reacted by saying "this man hasn't a clue what he is talking about" or "he should go back to singing hymns."

On April 21st, the archbishop of Canterbury suggested that big, unhealthy banks should be broken up into regional ones, as part of a "revolution in the aims" of banks designed to make sure that they served society as well as their own narrow interests. That sounded very like the proposal made last month by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, for local lenders modelled on the German system. It comes at a time when the government faces hard decisions about the future of the Royal Bank of Scotland after its rescue by the tax-payer. Given the immediacy of the issue, some people will accuse the archbishop (who lists his hobbies as French culture, sailing and politics) of making narrow political points rather than broad moral ones.

But he also had some longer-term ideas on the financial sector. Drawing on his experience as a member of a parliamentary Banking Standards Commission, he said senior positions in banking ought to form a regulated profession which required qualifications.

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Speaking on Radio 4... [on Saturday], the Archbishop of Canterbury stressed the implications of Christian ethics for the City of London

The Christian Gopsel has "always had strong social implications" and been concerned with "the common good", the Archbishop of Canterbury said....

In an interview for Radio 4's Week in Westminster, Archbishop Justin said his main mission wasn't to inject morality back into British business. But he said that how the City of London - which “is so important and so full of very gifted people” – behaves in relation to the common good is a major concern not just for the Church but for society generally.

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Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, laughs when it is suggested that he has a mission to raise moral standards in the City. “My key mission is to lead the Church in worshipping Jesus Christ,” he says.

He points out, however, that Christian teaching concerns the “common good”, and he is concerned about “how the City of London, which is so important and so full of very gifted people”, relates to this concept.

Dr Welby is in a unique position to do something about it. Outside the cathedral he enjoys two political pulpits from which to shape the debate: in the House of Lords and on the cross-party parliamentary banking commission.

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The City of London has been affected by a "culture of entitlement" at variance with what others think reasonable, the new Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

But the Most Reverend Justin Welby told the BBC business morality was in many ways much better than in the past.

He also defended his description of the UK's economic situation as a depression rather than a recession.

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Security experts at Twitter were fighting a seemingly losing battle yesterday against the Syrian Electronic Army, a shadowy group that sparked panic on financial markets this week by faking a news report about an bomb attack on the White House.

The group, which purports to support the regime in Damascus, hacked the Associated Press news agency’s Twitter account and reported that explosions in the White House had injured President Obama, sending markets into a tailspin, and wiping $136 billion (£89 billion) off the [value of the top 500 U.S. stocks in seconds]....

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There has never been any doubt that Trinity Church is wealthy. But the extent of its wealth has long been a mystery; guessed at by many, known by few.

Now, however, after a lawsuit filed by a disenchanted parishioner, the church has offered an estimate of the value of its assets: more than $2 billion.

The Episcopal parish, known as Trinity Wall Street, traces its holdings to a gift of 215 acres of prime Manhattan farmland donated in 1705 by Queen Anne of England. Since then, the church has parlayed that gift into a rich portfolio of office buildings, stock investments and, soon, mixed-use residential development.

Read it all from today's New York Times.

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Culture change in financial services will not be achieved by "light touch" or "heavy touch" regulation, Archbishop Justin said at a Westminster discussion organised by the Bible Society.

Instead the banking sector must adopt "an aim of service to society and not mere rent-seeking, and a culture of virtue based in the realities of daily life and not a fantasy nirvana," he said.

Describing what this change of culture might look like, the Archbishop said it would require "a ruthless honesty and a deep willingness to be made very uncomfortable indeed through listening to things one does not want to hear".

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Commodity prices have been falling since September, culminating in a rout over the past two weeks. That is a classic warning for the global economy.

It is becoming ever clearer that the roaring boom in global equities since last summer has priced in an economic recovery that does not in fact exist. The International Monetary Fund has had to nurse down its global growth forecasts yet again. We are still stuck in an old-fashioned trade depression, with pervasive over-capacity in manufacturing plant and a record global savings rate of 25pc of GDP.

German car sales fell 17pc in March. That should puncture the last illusions that Germany is about to pull Europe out of a self-inflicted slump.

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France's experiment with the Tobin Tax has proved a spectacular flop. Its finance ministry admits that the scattershot levy on financial transactions has raised just a third of the money expected since August.

Total takings will be a paltry €800m in 2013, but that overlooks the much greater damage inflicted on French finance, industry and the government's own tax base. "France is shooting itself in the foot," said Paul-Henri de La Porte du Theil, head of French finance industry AFG.

Jean-Yves Hocher from Crédit Agricole said it would cost his company €17bn. One French banker told Les Echos that the tax was "a weapon of mass destruction that is going to ruin our financial sector".

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • Taxes • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • Europe • France

Americans seem to be falling in love with stocks again.

Millions of people all but abandoned the market after the 2008 financial crisis, but now individual investors are pouring more money than they have in years into stock mutual funds. The flood, prompted by fading economic threats and better news on housing and jobs, has helped propel the broad market to within striking distance of its highest nominal level ever.

“You’ve got a real sea change in investor outlook,” said Andrew Wilkinson, the chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak Associates.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market

Late one night 20 years ago, when I was an oil executive rather than an Anglican bishop, I had run out of steam and patience toward the end of a complex multinational acquisition. We came to yet another bit of box ticking and I suggested we skip it, because we knew the material was accurate.

“Justin,” our wise investment-bank director said quietly, “you know that’s not how we do it.”

Under pressure, everyone is prone to make bad decisions and that story remains in my mind as I sit on the U.K.’s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, listening to people talk about banks, bankers and their failures.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Justin Welby • * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Stock Market • Taxes • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

"Dozens of companies have been delisted from our exchanges due to economy irregularities and outright fraud," said Dan David, vice president of GeoInvesting, LLC, a firm that monitored the Asian investment craze. "They raised hundreds of millions, some companies, that is outright money that was taken from investors that they'll never see again."

[Mary] Schapiro said the SEC opened 40 cases against Chinese firms during her tenure, targeting financial schemes she described as "brazen" and "extraordinary." Schapiro, who stepped down in December, said that when she asked Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan for help during a trip to Beijing in July her requests were rebuffed.

"We haven't yet achieved a level of cooperation that makes it possible for us to get access to Chinese companies the way we need," Shapiro said. "We will fight hard to try to secure recovery for U.S. investors. But it's harder when we don't have the cooperation of the foreign government."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Financial adviser Jeffrey Smith recently watched a once-confident client scrawl his fears across a legal pad during a discussion of stock investments: "Congressional stalemate," "unemployment," "European crisis," "corruption."

The client, retiree Nicholas Zerebny, later recalled how his thoughts strayed to Edvard Munch's "Scream" paintings. In the middle of the page, Mr. Zerebny drew a crude version of the iconic screaming face.

"That's how I feel right now," he told Mr. Smith.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • Stock Market • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007--

....seasoned Washington hands say that once this rather gloomy back and forth has played out - and it might take another week or more - the work towards reaching a solution that both sides can sell to their parties and their lawmakers will begin in earnest.

A deal by Christmas, a week before the fiscal cliff deadline, remains uncertain but not out of the question. The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases due to be implemented under existing law in early 2013 that may cut the federal budget deficit but also tip the economy back into recession.

The pattern of little happening until very close to a holiday is well-established on Capitol Hill. The past three pre-Christmas seasons brought important eleventh-hour developments on health care in 2009, tax cut extensions in 2010 and the payroll tax holiday in 2011.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • Taxes • The U.S. Government • Budget • Medicare • Social Security • The National Deficit • Politics in General • House of Representatives • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • Senate

Justin Welby, a former oil executive, may have hoped to have left the problems of Mammon behind on his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury, but he could be plunged into an immediate cash crisis.

The Church of England’s pension deficit could reach £500m by the end of this year, putting a huge financial burden on congregations, an independent pensions consultant has warned.

John Ralfe said congregations, who already pay £68m annually to support the Clergy Pensions Scheme’s 24,000 members, will have to find £108m a year if an existing plan to eliminate the deficit over 12 years is not extended.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Currency Markets • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market

Finance chiefs of the world's 20 leading economies are ringing alarm bells over the U.S. fiscal cliff and Europe's debt woes at a meeting in Mexico this weekend as they look to push back deficit reduction targets to help boost growth.

Unless a fractious U.S. Congress can reach a deal, about $600 billion in government spending cuts and higher taxes are set to kick in on January 1, threatening to push the American economy back into recession and hit world growth.

"The Americans themselves acknowledge that this is a problem," a G20 official said on condition of anonymity. "The U.S. administration says it doesn't want to fall off the fiscal cliff, but right now it can't tell us how exactly it will address it because that issue is on ice ahead of the election."

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We do not wish to distress you Only to appeal to you.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We stand here as Occupiers, as women, Queers, disabled, grandmas, young, old, as women of all faiths and none in solidarity with all other groups who are marginalised by economic injustice.

Even when times are good women, along with our children, are usually those who suffer the most. In times of economic crisis our inequality is amplified but we refuse to be victims.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Four women who chained themselves to the pulpit of St Paul's cathedral cut through the bolts after six hours on the advice of police, avoiding arrest...

he women wrapped chains around their waists after a prayer that Church officials had invited them to give. One, Josie Reid, chained herself to her wheelchair.

The action came on the anniversary of the Occupy protest last year when protesters took over the square outside.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

When Facebook Inc. (FB) filed its proposal Feb. 1 to go public, it touted the effectiveness of ads linked to customers’ friends, citing research from Nielsen, the audience-counting company.

arbara Jacobs, an assistant director for corporation finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was skeptical, as she and her staff vetted the filing to ensure Facebook had disclosed all material information to investors. The claim appeared to be drawn from marketing materials, not a Nielsen study, she wrote to Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman, 42.

She gave him an ultimatum: Produce the study and provide Nielsen’s consent for use of the data -- or don’t use it, she wrote to Ebersman on Feb. 28. Facebook dropped the reference after initial resistance.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Politics in General

The older Americans get, the more likely they are to suffer cognitive decline. Roughly 14 per cent of people over 71 have some level of dementia, according to the National Institutes of Health, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For those in their 90s, the rate rises to 37.4 per cent.

Many older folks have spent a lifetime managing their finances and take pride in it. They may hold onto their checkbooks and brokerage statements more tightly than they do their car keys.

Take the parents of John M. Smartt Jr., a Knoxville, Tennessee certified public accountant and investment adviser, who have been married for almost 70 years. Just last week they finally agreed to merge their separate checking accounts and allow Mr. Smartt to write checks for them.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Children • Health & Medicine • Marriage & Family • Psychology • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Personal Finance • Stock Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

When Jeanne Majors, 63, took an early retirement in December 2005, she assumed that she would pick up a part-time job and be in good financial shape. She didn't know that her future would quickly fall apart.

Majors, who is single and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., learned the hard way about the retirement obstacles that most women face today. When the economy slid into the recession, she lost her part-time job and could not find another.

"They wanted somebody young," Majors says. "Or if I was a man, somebody would have hired me at my age. I'm not sorry that I retired, but things didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Everything went bust."

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Aging / the Elderly • Women • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Personal Finance • Pensions • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The U.S. Government • Medicare • Social Security

Germany is set to advance a bill Wednesday imposing a spate of new rules on high-frequency trading, escalating Europe's sweeping response to concerns that speedy traders have brought instability to the markets.

The measure seeks to require traders to register with Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, collect fees from those who use high-speed trading systems excessively, and force stock markets to install circuit breakers that can interrupt trading if a problem is detected.

The new rules, which also grant the regulator the power to compel firms to detail their trading practices, will apply to anyone trading in Germany, no matter where they are based. If it is approved in cabinet, the bill will move to the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament. The bill is widely expected to pass later this year.

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...Rajoy is the victim of his electoral success: his majority government, ironically, is weaker for not including regionalist partners. The Catalan government sees the dissatisfaction with Madrid’s handling of the crisis as an opportunity: it may give the regionalists enough of a boost at the polls to force Madrid to hand them more autonomy, in other words, control of taxes. If Catalonia had control over its own taxes, the argument goes, the region would not have needed a bailout.

Rajoy’s choices are limited: he either refuses Catalan demands for more autonomy and risks enflaming Catalan nationalist sentiment, or agrees to increased autonomy, and risks enflaming Spanish nationalist sentiment.

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The bishop who chaired the panel responsible for exposing the devastating truth about the Hillsborough disaster has called for a national debate to establish accountability and to allow those in positions of authority to win back trust.

As Liverpool play a highly-charged game at Anfield against Manchester United this weekend, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, said that society was at a “crossroads”. His report, published last week, finally disclosed the extent of the cover-ups and lies told as authorities attempted to deflect blame for the 96 deaths.

He called for discussion that would help to restore accountability and trust to the police and other authorities. “It is timely for us to reconsider how people in positions of power, whoever they may be, behave in a transparent and accountable manner because to do so will then win back the trust which is so vulnerable at the moment in our society,” said the Bishop....

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Over 200 people from the UK’s leading businesses met in London this morning to search for a new blueprint for doing better business in Great Britain. They were seeking to unite corporate purpose with personal values so that businesses better serve society. The conference explored the themes of the business need for change, the inevitability of a conflict between profit maximisation and developing common good, and the distinctive practical contribution of a faith based ethical framework to personal and corporate responsibility.

The conference was facilitated by the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols.

“I think one of the most vivid images that we had this morning was that a duty of business is to contribute to the adhesiveness of a society – to its ‘glue’ is the phrase that we used – because if a society doesn’t have some glue, then it’s bad for business,” Archbishop Nichols said. “Because it’s difficult to understand that society. It’s difficult to get to appreciate what its needs are and what therefore what business can creatively respond to.”

Listen to it all (a little over 9 minutes).

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While the front pages of our newspapers have been dominated the Olympics and Paralympics, the business pages continue to reflect the human and economic costs of a business ethos that culminated in the financial crisis and subsequent loss of trust in banking and business.

Four years or more after the crisis broke, we are still talking of the lessons to be learnt – but not much nearer identifying what exactly they are, let alone applying them.

I was encouraged by several prominent business leaders to explore whether the Church was able to provide a forum for further reflection on this situation, so we could together move on.

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In June, it seemed as if any day might bring about the collapse of the Greek economy and with it, the entire euro zone and its decade-old currency. Then in July and August, it seemed as if everyone was on vacation. Now they’re back — finance officials and political leaders have been flying all over Europe to meet with one another — and along with them the crisis that has been raging for the last two years. Here is a guide to the new season’s most intriguing (and terrifying) [seven] story lines....

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South Carolina's pension fund investments have generated far less over the past year than hoped, but officials say there's no cause for alarm.

Preliminary numbers from the state's Retirement System Investment Commission show a return on investments of 0.6 percent for the fiscal year ending June 30. The state assumes a 7.5 percent annual return when calculating what it needs to keep the system solvent long-term.

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Reporting six months ago on the announcement of an initial public offering by Facebook, this paper sounded a warning to the social networking site. "An increasing number [of users] are likely to feel bruised as they are confronted with the bitter truth that they are mere fodder for a machine that means business," wrote our consumer correspondent. A marketing expert added: "It takes clever leadership and in-depth understanding of where you can introduce business elements without destroying your value for users."

Last week, stock in the company slumped to a new low. Many investors jumped at the first opportunity to offload their shares, reducing the value of the company to £34bn, from £104bn at its debut. To some who use Facebook, it was just desserts.

In many ways, the rise and potential fall of Facebook can be seen as a metaphor for the internet. It was invented in 2004 by a team of college students to fulfil a need that nobody knew they had, and quickly became one of the biggest companies in the world. It went "cash flow positive" in September 2009 with an annual advertising revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars. But although the internet has been around for longer than Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, still nobody really knows how to use it. Or to "monetise" it, as the reports in the past week's business pages put it.

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Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft Corp. Monday as the largest U.S. company ever, measured by stock-market value.

Apple hit the new milestone—$623.52 billion—at a time when its influence on the economy, on the stock market and on popular culture rivals that of some of the most powerful companies in U.S. history: General Motors Co., GM -0.64% whose Corvette and Impala typified a confident postwar manufacturing giant; Microsoft, whose technology heralded the arrival of the personal computer and the early Internet age; and International Business Machines Corp., IBM -0.36% whose buttoned-down rigor inspired rivals to reach for greatness.

"It is one of those iconic companies," says Richard Sylla, professor of financial history at New York University's Stern School of Business. "When I think about these companies, their products were used by all kinds of people and their leaders were considered geniuses."

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he Church Commissioners and the Church of England Pensions Board have today announced the sale of their shares in News Corporation on the advice of the Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG). The total shareholding sold was worth £1.9 million. As a result, none of the three national investing bodies of the Church of England hold shares in the company.

The Church of England first raised concerns with the Board of News Corporation in the aftermath of the phone hacking allegations that surfaced in July 2011. After a year of dialogue between the company and the EIAG, the Church of England was not satisfied that News Corporation had shown, or is likely in the immediate future to show, a commitment to implement necessary corporate governance reform.

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Update: One blogger was surprised:

Talking of which, I realised today that I am too much of an idealist. I’m afraid I found myself genuinely shocked by reports that the Church of England is selling its £1.9m stake in News Corp, as a protest against its lack of contrition over phone-hacking. The Church? Shares? In News Corp? A helpful man on Twitter called Paul Harrison furnished me with the info that the Church of England costs £1bn per annum to run, of which three quarters is covered by fundraising and donations, with the shortfall plugged by the stock market. This still shocks me a bit. I must have really thought that churches were funded via the collection plate. What a quaint, unspoiled, John Major-like picture of England I must cling to!

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Run by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, which is affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Jewry, “Money Matters” is offered at more than 350 locations in 22 countries this year, and is proving to be one of the most popular courses JLI has ever offered, said Rabbi Efraim Mintz, JLI’s executive director.

“When students first come to the course, they may respect the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) and the Talmud (a 2,000 year-old compendium of Jewish oral law and biblical commentary), but few see it as something relevant to the here and now,” Mintz said.

“But soon, they are mesmerized and surprised by its applicability to the business issues of the day.”

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When computerized stock trading runs amok, as it did this week on Wall Street, the firm responsible typically can jump in and hit a kill switch.

But as a torrent of faulty trades spewed Wednesday morning from a Knight Capital Group trading program, no one at the firm managed to stop it for more than a half-hour....

Several market insiders said that they were bewildered, because in a market where trading losses can pile up in seconds, executives typically have a simple command that can immediately halt trading.

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A trading glitch Wednesday morning led to some puzzling stock movements on Wall Street, prompting reviews by the New York Stock Exchange and securities regulators.

"Irregular trading" in 148 stocks led the exchange to review activity after the opening bell, the exchange's operator, NYSE Euronext, said in a statement....

The issues appear to stem from a "technology issue" at Knight Capital Group, a major Wall Street brokerage firm based in Jersey City, N.J.

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Presbyterians in favor of divestment said that their church could not in good conscience hold stock in companies that they said perpetuate an unjust occupation and undermine the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But opponents said that divestment would unfairly vilify Israel, and accomplish little but further polarization.

Arthur Shippee, a delegate from southern New England, said: “What divestment will achieve is this: We will add a whisper soon lost in the storm, but we will further the divisions in our church when we have our own serious problems to address, and we will precipitate divisions with the synagogues within our communities whom we work with frequently on a variety of issues. This will be perceived as picking on Israel, and how could it not?”

Speaking in favor of divestment and against the pro-investment resolution, Tim Simpson, a delegate from the Presbytery of St. Augustine in Jacksonville, Fla., said: “The Palestinians aren’t asking us for a check, sisters and brothers. The Palestinians are asking us for justice. They’re asking us for dignity. How can you write a check to a people who don’t control their own water?”

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Faced with slowing growth in its advertising business, Facebook is considering throwing open its social network to children, in the hope that their parents will pay for games and other content on the site.

The plan is also designed to limit the company's legal risk over the already-widespread use of the site by minors, millions of whom might be on Facebook after lying about their age.

News that chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, pictured, is considering legitimising and expanding the use of the site by children comes as Facebook shares fall further below their flotation price. The stock slipped below $27 in early trading in New York yesterday, compared to the $38 at which they were sold to new investors two-and-a-half weeks ago, as investors continued to fret about slowing advertising income from its website and the even narrower options for monetising traffic on its mobile site.

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Exactly 30 minutes into the problem-solving the researchers interrupted each group. They entered the room bearing a plate of cookies. Four cookies. The team consisted of three people, but there were these four cookies. Every team member obviously got one cookie, but that left a fourth cookie, just sitting there. It should have been awkward. But it wasn't. With incredible consistency the person arbitrarily appointed leader of the group grabbed the fourth cookie, and ate it. Not only ate it, but ate it with gusto: lips smacking, mouth open, drool at the corners of their mouths. In the end all that was left of the extra cookie were crumbs on the leader's shirt.

This leader had performed no special task. He had no special virtue. He'd been chosen at random, 30 minutes earlier. His status was nothing but luck. But it still left him with the sense that the cookie should be his.

This experiment helps to explain Wall Street bonuses and CEO pay, and I'm sure lots of other human behavior. But it also is relevant to new graduates of Princeton University.

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Facebook Inc.’s initial public offering, plagued by trading errors and a 16 percent drop in the share price, will push more individual investors out of a stock market they already distrust after the financial crisis.

“This is clearly the latest in a long string of events that is eviscerating the confidence investors have in the market,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago attorney who represents retail investors. “The perception is Wall Street jiggered this IPO so the underwriters made money, Facebook executives made money and the small investor got left holding the bag.”

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The immediate future of the global economy, including Australia, now depends on Europe, and whether it can restore confidence to markets. If European leaders can resolve their tangle of problems, growth is ahead of us. If they can't, all bets are off.

Pessimism comes more naturally than optimism. It is now five years since we first heard the phrase ''the sub-prime crisis'', which rang the end of a golden era of debt-financed growth. Since then, we've had years of recurring crises, summits and resolutions that promised to solve the problems, but haven't.

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Facebook Inc.took eight years to stage one of the most anticipated initial public offerings ever. The anticlimax came Friday, as Wall Street bankers struggled to prevent the newly minted stock from ending its first day with a loss.

he stock had been widely predicted to soar on its first day. Instead, up until the closing moments of the trading session, Facebook's underwriters battled to keep the stock from slipping below its offering price of $38 a share. Such a stumble would have been a significant embarrassment, particularly for a prominent new issue like Facebook, the most heavily traded IPO of all time.

In the end, the bankers succeeded. When trading on Nasdaq ended at 4 p.m., the social network's stock was up just a hair, 0.6%, at $38.23.

The roller-coaster day—Facebook's shares started out jumping roughly 11%, before cooling off—was also beset by trading glitches and a 30-minute delay in the opening of trading. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.didn't respond to requests for comment.

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It’s a teachable moment, but what’s the right lesson? Already, the $2 billion-plus trading debacle at JPMorgan Chase has inspired a powerful storyline. Nothing has changed since the financial crisis, it’s said. Big banks remain out of control, gambling recklessly. If Jamie Dimon’s bank, reputed to be one of the best-managed, can get into trouble, what can we expect of the others? Government regulations and regulators need to be tougher to counteract bankers’ greed and incompetence.

The storyline is marred only by this: Everything in it is exaggerated, misleading or wrong.

Let’s take stock. Here are four propositions that defy conventional wisdom.

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That the losses would only dent the quarterly profits at one of the world’s largest banks, and that they were revealed by the bank’s own management, did not diminish the chorus on Capitol Hill for tighter controls. The charismatic and often outspoken Dimon, who has argued rigorously against strict financial regulations, fielded calls Friday from several lawmakers and regulators at the bank’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters.

The biggest blow-up between Wall Street and Washington since 2010, when Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Act to tighten oversight of the financial industry, comes just as regulators are drafting new rules governing banks. A signature feature of the law is the Volcker Rule, a prohibition on banks engaging in speculative bets. The authors of the act say the measure might have prevented JPMorgan’s bad trades had it been in effect.

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J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. told traders several months ago to make bets aimed at shielding the bank from the market fallout of Europe's deepening mess. But instead of shrinking the risk, their complicated bets backfired into losses of as much as $200 million a day in late April and early May, people familiar with the situation said.

Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are examining what went wrong, who is responsible and whether J.P. Morgan should have told investors about the losses sooner, according to people familiar with the matter.

While attention has focused on large positions taken by a trader nicknamed "the London whale," he and other traders were carrying out instructions from a bank executive, these people said.

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A statement posted on the Occupy London website on Tuesday said that there would be a “teach-in” at 1 p.m. on Saturday at St Paul’s, “organised by Tent City University, the educational arm of Occupy London. It is aiming at promoting informed political action and exploring viable economic alternatives before we pay a visit to City institutions that caused and continue to profit by the [financial] crisis.”

It said that the global day of action would involve “citizens using peaceful, creative ways to deliver their own messages to the financial and corporate élite of the City”. The protesters would “continue to exercise our right to peacefully assemble in public spaces”.

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[CEO Jamie] Dimon said the losses were caused by "errors," "sloppiness" and "bad judgment."

"This was a unique thing we did," Dimon said. "Obviously it had a lot of problems. It was a bad strategy. It became more complex, it was poorly managed."

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Much depends on the reaction of investors in debt issued by European nations, said Dimitri Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. If they fear that the crisis response is losing momentum, they will likely demand higher interest rates — not just from Greece, but from other nations seen as carrying too much debt.

The result would be rising borrowing costs for Greece as well as countries that haven't received bailouts, like Italy and Spain. Rising borrowing costs sent global stock markets diving last year. Uncertainty about the path forward in Europe may mean a return to extreme market volatility after several months of relative calm.

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Delegates and visitors gathered under the brilliant Tampa sun for a noon rally against the privatization of prisons, led by the United Methodist Task Force on Immigration.

Participants in the April 28 rally sang “We Shall Overcome” while carrying signs saying, “Profit from Pain is Inhumane.”

The rally celebrated the establishment of a new investment screen adopted by the United Methodist Board of Pension and Health Benefits. That screen, adopted in January, forbids board investments in companies that derive more than 10 percent of their revenue from the operation of prison facilities.

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Prosecutors have uncovered more financial fraud in church networks than they ever imagined. "It took the financial downturn. Money was drying up—the new investors were not coming in, so Ponzi schemes collapsed," IRS Special Agent in Charge for Criminal Investigations Ken Hines told Christianity Today.

Hines, based in Seattle, has helped expose Ponzis for more than 20 years. He has seen first-hand how the church environment has proven to be an ideal context for affinity fraud. "When you go to church, you don't expect to get lied to or deceived or manipulated into losing your life's savings...."

The sickening net effect of fraud puts a dark cloud over pastors and other leaders in local churches....If a faithful church member cannot trust his or her own pastor, whom can they trust?

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When the European Union's finance ministers met in Copenhagen on 30 March they gave the clearest indication yet of what has been clear to most observers for months: that the 27 member states cannot agree a tax on financial transactions. A tax on share deals modelled on the UK's stamp duty might be possible, but a wider tax on financial trades is off the agenda for the foreseeable future. The German finance ministry, one of the strongest supporters of the tax, admitted as much at the meeting, calling for work to focus on a tax on share transactions.

Since June 2011, when the European Commission announced it would propose an FTT, it had been obvious that the plan would not fly...

Apparently heedless that the object was immoveable, José Manuel Barroso, the Commission president, last week made yet another attempt to exert irresistible force in support of the tax. He told members of national parliaments and the European Parliament that the revenue raised by the tax would allow member states a cut of up to 50% in their contributions to funding the EU.

Perhaps Barroso's intransigence is inspired by the unfortunate fact that the FTT proposal was central to the Commission's plans for financing the EU's multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2014 to 2020. Removing the idea of an EU-wide tax from the agenda leaves a big hole in Barroso's plans for financing the MFF.

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Does this mean we should not enjoy all the earthly riches and goods? No. Enjoy them. Earn them. It is a misconception that one has to be poor to be spiritual, and that hard work should not be rewarded. What is important is finding the balance between greed and having enough, and defining what a joyful life means to us....

So how are we to correct the negative traits of capitalism? A Robin Hood tax, or Tobin tax, has been suggested. Yet there is a risk that such a tax is more likely to hit investors than banks. And it is not yet clear how it would discourage risky behaviour by banks.

We cannot tax ourselves out of this and hope that this will solve the problem because we are not addressing the root cause of the behaviour. We are in self-denial because we are treating the symptoms, not healing the patient.

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Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set preliminary goal of $5 billion.

Facebook had discussed raising as much as $10 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand.

The filing sets the stage for an IPO in May.

The important stats right off the bat: 845 million users; 483 million daily users; annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in operating income and $1 billion net income.

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Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: It does nothing! It creates chaos! It’s a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry! (Or something to that effect.) But these are distortions of a fundamentally beneficial business. The country’s largest investment banks, commercial banks and a few big insurance companies (what we generally refer to as Wall Street) play the crucial role of intermediation — matching borrowers with lenders. Most of the time, the industry does this extremely well (though in the case of matching homeowners’ debt to the global financial system, too enthusiastically). Perhaps the best way to really appreciate what Wall Street does is to imagine life without it....

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In a time of austerity it is salutary once more to ask: what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? This is not to argue for a “Bible-says-it-all politics”, which has been out of fashion since our disastrous flirtation with it in the English Civil War of the 17th century. It is simply to recognise that all politics rest on assumptions; myths properly understood, not as fairytales but as archetypal stories about the human condition.

Both our economic activity and our political life must have ground beneath them. Human beings are not just blind globs of idling protoplasm but creatures with a name who live in a world of symbols and of dreams, not merely of matter.

If we are not only to survive this period of austerity, but even to learn to flourish in it, then we shall have to relearn a more adequate story of what is precious about human life. The story of the birth of the infant king in a poor family is a good starting place.

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Watching the MF Global saga unfold, I had to wonder: “How was it possible for a broker dealer to tap segregated client monies to speculate in risky assets and lose billions?”

MF Global’s story, as you will soon understand it, raises serious concerns for any investor. That the activities that led to MF Global’s collapse were possibly legal (!) is stunning. The details are complex, but follow them through to the end and you will see all of the problems of our system — political corruption, excess leverage, focus on short-term profit at the expense of survival — in one sordid affair.

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As the political leaders of Europe come together to save the euro and European Union itself, I believe the time has come for religious leaders to do likewise.

The task ahead of us is not between Jews and Catholics, or even Jews and Christians, but between Jews and Christians on the one hand and the increasingly, even aggressively secularising forces at work in Europe today on the other, challenging and even ridiculing our faith.

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we — Jews and Christians, side by side — must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe to recover its soul.

The idea of religious leaders saving the euro and the EU sounds absurd. What has religion to do with economics, or spirituality with financial institutions? The answer is that the market economy has religious roots. It emerged in a Europe saturated with Judeo-Christian values. In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, material prosperity is a divine blessing. Poverty crushes the human spirit as well as the body, and its alleviation is a sacred task.

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What this means is that there are Christians who already occupy Wall Street every day in their occupations as businessmen and women, bankers and investors, traders and executives, secretaries and receptionists, janitors and security guards. The church's responsibility to these "occupiers" is to provide them with the moral and spiritual formation necessary to be faithful followers of Christ every day in their productive service to others.

A group of business and ministry leaders in the UK articulated this in a recent letter to The Times of London, in which they observed, "Many Christians today work within mainstream business, attempting to be 'salt and light'. Others run organizations . . . that are committed to using business and finance to bring social benefits, raise living standards and create jobs." Through these kinds of efforts such business leaders "are part of the broader effort of the Church to reform capitalism by going to the root of the problem: the human heart."

Christians therefore must occupy the world in their occupations, doing all their work as Christians, whatever it is, "whether in word or deed," as the Apostle Paul instructs, "in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3:17 NIV). In this way the church finds its most significant and transformative cultural engagement through its affirmation of the daily work of Christians who already occupy Wall Street (and all streets).

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Read them both.

I was interested to see the AP describe the Presiding Bishop's remarks as "a rare comment on a local issue."

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For months, they were the best of neighbors: the slapdash champions of economic equality, putting down stakes in an outdoor plaza, and the venerable Episcopal parish next door, whose munificence helped sustain the growing protest.

But in the weeks since Occupy Wall Street was evicted from Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, relations between the demonstrators and Trinity Wall Street, a church barely one block from the New York Stock Exchange, have reached a crossroads.

The displaced occupiers had asked the church, one of the city’s largest landholders, to hand over a gravel lot, near Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, for use as an alternate campsite and organizing hub. The church declined, calling the proposed encampment “wrong, unsafe, unhealthy and potentially injurious.”

And now the Occupy movement, after weeks of targeting big banks and large corporations, has chosen Trinity, one of the nation’s most prominent Episcopal parishes, as its latest antagonist.

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Two new ethical investment policies have been adopted by the Church of England national investing bodies following advice from the Church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG).

The national investing bodies' new policy maintains the toughest possible exclusion of companies involved in the production or distribution of pornography that their ethical investment research provider is able to implement....

The new policy on high interest rate lending builds on the previous policy under which companies involved in weekly collected home credit ('doorstep lending') were excluded from investment.

The new policy extends the investment exclusion to cover other forms of specialised high interest rate lending, in particular payday and pawnbroker loans.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Stock Market • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

European leaders say 26 out of 27 EU member states have backed a tax and budget pact to tackle the eurozone debt crisis.

Only the UK has said it will not join. Prime Minister David Cameron said he had to protect key British interests, including its financial markets.

The 17 countries that use the euro have all agreed to the deal.

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The European Union suffered the most damaging split in its 54 year history after David Cameron used the British veto to block eurozone treaty change after France and Germany opposed “safeguards” to protect Britain’s economy....

The Prime Minister insisted that he had been prepared to support treaty change among all 27 of the EU’s members to allow the 17-strong eurozone to take measures to tackle its debt crisis and to enforce tough new fiscal rules for the single currency.

But after 11 hours of bad-tempered talks, Mr Cameron said that he had blocked the changes because France and Germany and refused to agree to a “protocol” giving the City of London protection from a wave of EU financial service regulations related to the eurozone crisis.

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The spectacular fall of Jon Corzine will be on display Thursday when the former New Jersey senator and governor testifies before a House panel on the bankruptcy of his former firm, MF Global.

Just months ago Corzine, a Democrat, was seen as a possible successor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

So confident was MF Global in Corzine that its bond sale in August included a “key man” provision that gave investors an extra 1 percent in interest if Corzine left the firm “due to his appointment to a federal position by the president of the United States and confirmation of that appointment by the United States Senate prior to July 1, 2013.”

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MF Global Holdings Ltd.'s executive in charge of controlling risks raised serious concerns several times last year to directors at the securities firm about the growing bet on European bonds by his boss, Jon S. Corzine, people familiar with the matter said.

The board allowed the company's exposure to troubled European sovereign debt to swell from about $1.5 billion in late 2010 to $6.3 billion shortly before MF Global tumbled into bankruptcy Oct. 31, these people said. The executive who challenged Mr. Corzine resigned in March.

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Standard and Poor's has put Germany, France and 13 other eurozone countries on "credit watch" due to fears over the impact of the debt crisis.

S&P's move means that countries with top AAA ratings would have a 50% chance of seeing their rating's downgraded.

The news came as a surprise to investors and saw stocks fall back on early gains as the euro also fell.

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Wall Street executives, in a private meeting with a top Federal Reserve official in late September, recommended a coordinated effort by central banks to remedy the European financial crisis, according to Fed documents received in an open-records request.

The meeting, led by Louis Bacon, founder of hedge fund Moore Capital Management, preceded a joint action Wednesday by the world's major central banks, which banded together to provide liquidity to the markets through cheap U.S. dollar loans....

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Even as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could stand by and let it happen.

A euro break-up would cause a global bust worse even than the one in 2008-09. The world’s most financially integrated region would be ripped apart by defaults, bank failures and the imposition of capital controls....The euro zone could shatter into different pieces, or a large block in the north and a fragmented south. Amid the recriminations and broken treaties after the failure of the European Union’s biggest economic project, wild currency swings between those in the core and those in the periphery would almost certainly bring the single market to a shuddering halt. The survival of the EU itself would be in doubt.

Yet the threat of a disaster does not always stop it from happening. The chances of the euro zone being smashed apart have risen alarmingly, thanks to financial panic, a rapidly weakening economic outlook and pigheaded brinkmanship. The odds of a safe landing are dwindling fast.

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Ms. [Nancy] Lazar is among a group of well-connected investors and analysts with access to top Federal Reserve officials who give them a chance at early clues to the central bank's next policy moves, according to interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal through open records searches. Ms. Lazar, an economist with International Strategy & Investment Group Inc., wouldn't comment for this article.

The access is part of a push by hedge funds and other traders to get more information about the inner workings of government. Developments in Washington have become more important after the financial crisis in 2008 spawned new regulations and a stronger hand by lawmakers in businesses.

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Occupy Toronto protesters cannot use the city's landmark cathedral to evade eviction if the courts rule they have to leave the park they took over more than a month ago, the Anglican dean of Toronto said Thursday.

Rev. Douglas Stoute said the church owns some of the land adjacent to the majestic St. James Cathedral, but the city owns the rest and runs park as a "seamless garment."

"We have no authority to allow them to stay here or not," Stoute said of the protesters.

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European banks, increasingly concerned about their ability to access funding, are devising complex and potentially risky new deals that enable them to continue borrowing from the European Central Bank.

The banks' moves, which include behind-the-scenes swapping of assets among financial institutions, could heighten risk across Europe's already fragile financial system, say some senior industry officials and regulators.

They also are a sign that struggling banks across Europe are preparing for a period of prolonged reliance on financial lifelines from the ECB. The Continent's intensifying financial crisis has made it difficult for many banks to obtain funding from customary market sources.

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Occupiers’ primary outrage seems to be against poor stewardship. They use the language of “increasing inequality,” but more precisely they may object to the unreliable correlation between productivity and compensation. Few resented Steve Jobs his wealth, given the value created by Apple, but who does not resent golden parachutes paid out to senior executives of unprofitable, much less failed, companies? Occupiers will garner powerful and unexpected allies — big shareholders, hedge funds, and activist investors — if they use this language of just stewardship rather than a resentful Robin Hood rhetoric.

In trying to uncover the causes of today’s crisis, occupiers would also do well to apply their axe to the roots of the problem, which an even cursory study of economic history would reveal is hardly the prominent branch of banker malevolence. During the last Great Depression, people and governments wanted to consume more and grow faster than their productivity allowed. If you are unwilling to accept the financial limits of your own productivity, you borrow. But from whom? Contrary to populist belief, the private sector is not generally eager to lend to parties lacking income, assets or collateral. Consequently, ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt created “government sponsored entities” (like Fannie Mae), GSEs and their ballooning balance sheets have encouraged new loans to parties the “greedy banks” would not generally have lent to of their own volition. These GSEs promise to buy much of the debt generated by politically evocative but generally not creditworthy groups — veterans, students, low-income and first-time homebuyers, farmers in a rapidly industrializing economy. While a case can certainly be made for using government to encourage constructive behavior or to help disadvantaged groups, there are ways to do this without so profoundly distorting the economy.

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Twenty-five years ago, as the U.S. faced an economic crisis and a fierce debate over cutting taxes for the wealthy and limiting benefits for the poor, Catholic bishops issued a landmark statement on social justice that became the touchstone for religious opposition to “trickle down” economics.

This week, as America faces even worse economic circumstances and engages in the same fierce debate over budget priorities, the bishops gathered here for their annual meeting focused on a handful of internal matters and geared up for fights against gay marriage and abortion.

The bishops did not take note of the document’s anniversary—or its core teachings. That shift has dismayed those who believe that this is a moment for the hierarchy to announce the church’s views on the economy with the same vigor that it promotes other causes.

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There can be little doubt that capitalism is a productive way to order economic life. But we need to remember, as the protestors have reminded us, that that is all that it is -- an economic system based on the entirely reasonable propositions that capital has value, and that supply and demand are the most efficient way to set prices. Capitalism is of no help at all in determining what is morally good -- that is something that must instead be determined by the community's wider values.

And there should be no question that when an economic system fails to reflect those communal values, it should be modified and governed until it does. To say, as some do, that any attempt to control or guide our economic system is neither wise nor possible is to admit that an economic system has decisive control of our lives. For a Christian, such an admission would be nothing less than to yield to idolatry. (Though I do not claim deep knowledge of other religious traditions, I suspect that this is true for them as well.) God alone is the One, and the only One, to whom we can concede such ultimate authority. For the non-theist to make the argument that the laws of economics are immutable is to concede that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. That is the same argument that those in the grip of various kinds of addiction make: "I am not in control, my addiction made me do it."

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First it was Athens. Then Rome. Could Paris be next?

While Italy has replaced Greece as the focus of anxiety amid Europe’s worsening debt crisis, investors are increasingly concerned about the outlook for France, whose banks are among the world’s biggest and are closely linked with their counterparts in the United States.

One crucial gauge of investor sentiment, the difference between what France pays to borrow versus what Germany pays, has doubled since the beginning of October, and last week reached its widest point since the formation of the euro currency zone in 1999. Meanwhile, speculation that France could soon lose the sterling triple-A rating on its sovereign debt intensified after Standard & Poor’s mistakenly told clients on Thursday that it was downgrading France’s debt.

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Mr [Mario] Monti's candidature was announced after President Giorgio Napolitano spent the day in 17 meetings with senior politicians.

Speaking to reporters shortly afterwards, Mr Monti said Italy should be an "element of strength and not weakness" within the EU.

"We will aim at solving the financial situation, resume the path of growth. [We want to build] a future of dignity and hope for our children."

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A euro-zone central banker confesses that he has lately been thinking about historical catastrophes such as the first world war and wondering how the world blundered into them. “From the middle of a crisis”, he says ominously, “you can see how easy it is to make mistakes.”

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was supposed to banish the competitive devaluations that threatened the single market in the early 1990s. It promised to bind a unified Germany into the EU and pave the way for some sort of political union in Europe. Today that dream has not vanished altogether, but the single market is under threat once more. Europe’s nations are at loggerheads, Germany is in a state of outrage, and the link between the euro and the nation state is more fraught than ever. EMU truly is, writes David Marsh, author of a history of the euro, “Europe’s Melancholy Union”.

“The 2008 crisis shows that the dominant economies were not as dominant as they thought,” says Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French former head of the IMF. “If Europe fails, it will suffer from low growth, economic domination and cultural domination.” Can Europe turn back from the abyss? Only if the core countries will support the rest as they submit themselves to radical political, social and economic reform. Nobody should be under any illusions about how difficult that will be.

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[The plenty with which we are surrounded] today is tinged with bewilderment. Drug abuse and violence are rife. Mental illness seems to have become more common, not simply better recognised, over the last generation or so. Rates of self-harm among teenage girls are also high and seem to be increasing. Personal debt has hit a record high.

So what has gone wrong? What has caused the loss of paradise? David Cameron said two years ago: "Research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in The Spirit Level, has shown that among the richest countries, it's the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator."

The Prime Minister was right to draw attention to this book. Its essential message, backed up by sound social science research, is that inequality damages community life and the relationships that hold us together. It shows that many social problems are more common in societies with larger income differences. Sadly, Britain is among the more unequal of the rich countries.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has said he sympathises with the feelings of protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral.

He told BBC's Politics Show that the anti-capitalist demo reflected feelings about those who had prospered in the economic crisis, as many more suffered.

Mr Cable added that legislation could be introduced to curb executive pay.

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There are Christians, too, eager to be seen as Christians. They face a special challenge. They want to make the church visible, so they wear clerical collars or other religious garb, like the albs, or white robes, that lay Christians may also wear.

But they know that many, especially on the political left, are wary of Christians, suspicious that these men and women in strange garments are seeking converts. When liberal activists hear “Christian,” they often think “conservative.” Many would thrill to see an imam marching next to them but shudder at a priest.

So committed Christians have different answers to the question, “How Christian should we seem?” Marisa Egerstrom, an Episcopalian who studies religion at Harvard, recognized Occupy Wall Street as a sign of the times, “a continuation of the Arab Spring.” On Sept. 17, she brought a group of 10 Boston-area Christians, including Roman Catholics and Lutherans, to Zuccotti Park in New York.

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The Prime Minister said on Tues­day that people should “not be able to erect tents all over the place”, as the Occupy protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral continued into its fourth week. There are now an estimated 2000 Occupy protests around the world, including several in the UK.

During an appearance before the House of Commons liaison com­mit­tee, David Cameron said that protest “is certainly a right that people have. But I have got this rather quaint view — you shouldn’t be able to erect tents all over the place.

“I think protesting is something you, on the whole, should do on two feet, rather than lying down — in some cases in a fairly comatose state.”

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Mr [Ken] Costa, the chairman of the St Paul's Initiative, established by the Church to open up a debate on ethical capitalism, said the clergy's response to the ongoing protests outside St Paul's Cathedral must not turn into a "reheated Faith in the City".

In his first public comments since his appointment, Mr Costa insisted that a flourishing banking sector was "essential to any successful economy" and that financial incentives are "both valid and effective".

He also said that stiffer regulation of financial services was not necessarily the solution to the global economic crisis, saying, "you cannot regulate into existence a culture of honesty, integrity, truthfulness and responsibility".

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An interesting retrospective so to speak--read it all.

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British bankers have admitted that they are paid too much, a report into moral standards in the City of London will reveal tomorrow.

A survey of 500 workers in City financial institutions, carried out for the Christian think-tank St Paul's Institute, found that "a substantial number" believed they were overpaid compared with other professions – particularly frontline workers including teachers and, most of all, nurses.

The results will fuel continuing bitterness towards the industry over its culpability for the financial crisis and its apparent failure to rein in huge salaries and bonuses . Last night The Sunday Times reported the publicly owned Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to pay its investment bankers about £500m in bonuses.

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A financial transaction tax would be the wrong choice for Europe at any time; and particularly now.

To understand the impact of FTT, we need to answer four essential questions. Is it an efficient means of raising tax revenue? Would it benefit the end-users of the financial markets, both businesses and consumers? Would it enable the creation of economic growth and jobs? And would it make financial markets more stable?

First, financial services is a mobile, global and highly competitive sector. The European Commission’s suggests that Europe would lose 10 per cent of its securities market, 40 per cent of its spot currency market and 70 to 90 per cent of its derivatives market if FTT were introduced.

These are alarming numbers and economically very damaging — and they are not mere conjecture. Sweden’s FTT (from 1984 to 1991), resulted in between 90 and 99 per cent of traders in bonds, equities and derivatives moving from Stockholm to London. This was an expensive lesson for Sweden. Its experience should prevent Europe from making a similar mistake.

Second, what will be the impact on users of financial markets, including ordinary consumers? Economic theory suggests that a transaction tax would largely be passed on to end-users, whether they are savers, investors or businesses. The European Commission itself makes this point.

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Many City workers feel the gap between rich and poor in the UK is too great, according to a report by a think-tank.

The St Paul's Institute report, Value and Values: Perceptions of Ethics in the City Today, said 75% of respondents thought the wealth divide was too big.

The findings were based on a survey in August of 515 financial professionals.

The think-tank is linked to St Paul's Cathedral, in London, where protesters against corporate greed have been demonstrating since 15 October.

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(Please note that this is an article about the op-ed which is the post previous to this one--KSH).

The Archbishop of York has urged the Government to introduce a radical overhaul of the tax system and called for greed to be made as socially unacceptable as racism and homophobia.

Dr John Sentamu claimed many of the wealthiest in society are avoiding paying their dues in a stinging attack on the growing divide between Britain’s rich and poor.

Highlighting the growing gulf between the poorest sections of society and the nation’s uber-wealthy, Dr Sentamu also said those who have accumulated the biggest fortunes should not be included on the Queen’s Honours List.

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Top pay has been found to bear little or no relation to company performance, but even if it did, isn’t the performance of a company dependent on the work and well-being of all its staff?

Among the ill effects of very large income differences between rich and poor are that they weaken community life and make societies less cohesive.

If the concept of the Big Society is to become a reality, so that people come to know and take more care of each other, income differences must surely be reduced.

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While their ages, backgrounds and styles were different, [Maria] Calef and [Daniel] Wilkes delivered the same message to passers-by Wednesday morning.
Calef hoisted a yellow poster board that read, “Which corporation decides legislation?”
Wilkes held a white sign that said, “People’s needs over corporate greed.”
The two are part of the Occupy Columbia movement, an evolving group who have settled in at the State House, creating a protest culture of sharing and open dialogue.

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Bishop Richard [Chartres], for his part, made clear that he was not about to issue detailed policy prescriptions for the world of finance: “The church doesn’t and shouldn’t claim ordination gives you a tremendously privileged insight into how to solve the euro-zone problems.” Asked whether that implied a difference between himself and his boss, Bishop Richard replied teasingly that he would study the Financial Times article with great respect, given its author’s credentials as a prominent European intellectual. As a proof of the two men’s continuing personal closeness, he cited their common interest in Russian Orthodox theology and culture—a topic on which the number of potential conversation partners is limited.

But despite the chaotic image it presented this week, the Church of England looks more likely to trundle on eccentrically than to break into establishment and anti-capitalist camps. Buildings like St Paul’s are part of the reason. No matter how compelling the demands of the poor and angry, which faction would ever agree to abandon the cathedrals?

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Many of the proposals, which were compiled by a special church commission, seem in keeping with Christian mores: no investing in companies that manufacture guns or pornography; avoid investing in countries that are considered dictatorships or that present a risk to the environment.

The guidelines say investing in the alcohol industry is appropriate, so long as the beverages contain no more than 15 percent alcohol by volume.

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