NY Times Guildhall
at the heart of the City can be a lulling sort of place after a long
day. The statuary and vaulted timber ceiling of the medieval great hall
lead the eye to wander and the mind to muse on Britain’s strangest quirk
— its centuries of continuity. Grace is said, claret is served, glasses
clink and dreaminess sets in. A keynote speech from a central banker is
all that is required to complete the soporific effect.
Or
so one would think, until Mark Carney, the Canadian governor of the
Bank of England, lays into unfettered capitalism. “Just as any
revolution eats its children,” he says, “unchecked market fundamentalism
can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of
capitalism itself.”
All
ideologiesa, he continues, are prone to extremes. Belief in the power of
the market entered “the realm of faith” before the 2008 meltdown.
Market economies became market societies. They were characterized by
“light-touch regulation” and “the belief that bubbles cannot be
identified.”
Carney
pulls no punches. Big banks were too big to fail, operating in a
“heads-I-win-tails-you-lose bubble.” Benchmarks were rigged for personal
gain. Equity markets blatantly favored “the technologically empowered
over the retail investor.” Mistrust grew — and persists.
“Prosperity
requires not just investment in economic capital, but investment in
social capital,” Carney argues, having defined social capital as “the
links, shared values and beliefs in a society which encourage
individuals not only to take responsibility for themselves and their
families but also to trust each other and work collaboratively to
support each other.”