Louisville Process Theology Network

Anthropology also instills a sense of skepticism about  official rhetoric. In most societies, elites try to maintain their power not
simply by garnering wealth, but also by dominating the mainstream ideologies, in terms of both what is said and what is not discussed. Social ‘silences’ serve to maintain power structures, in ways that participants often barely understand
themselves until left alone.

That set of ideas might sound might sound excessively abstract (or hippie). But, they would be to be sorely needed now.

In recent years, regulators, bankers, politicians, investors, and journalists have all failed to employ truly holistic thought to
our collective cost. Bankers have treated their mathematical models as if they were an infallible guide to the future, failing to see that these models were based on a ridiculously limited set of data.

A ‘silo” mentality has come to rule inside banks, leaving different departments competing for resources; with shockingly little
wider vision or oversight. The regulators who were supposed to oversee the banks have mirrored the silo pattern, too, in their own fragmented practices. Most pernicious of all, financiers have come to regard banking as a silo in its own
right, detached from the rest of society . . .

Now, however, it is clear that this lack of holistic thought and debate has had devastating consequences. Regulators have realized,
too late, that they were wrong to place so much faith in the creed of risk dispersion. Bank executives have been confronted with vast losses created by dysfunctional internal silos. Politicians are facing fiscal crisis as an
economic boom crumbles to dust.

Most tragic of all, millions of ordinary families, who never even knew that collateralized debt obligations existed, far less dealt
with them, have suffered shattering financial blows. . .

In pointing out the cultural issues, I do not mean to suggest that tangible macroeconomic issues were not crucial too. Excessively
loose monetary policy stoked the credit bubble. So did savings imbalances and poor regulatory structures. Those tangible deficiencies must be addressed . . .

Yet what is also needed is a wider rethinking of the culture of finance.

For too many years, bankers have treated ‘credit’ as merely an isolated game of numbers. The roots of the word, though, came for the Latin ‘credere’, meaning ‘to believe.’ That is a concept centered on wider
social relations which financiers forget at their peril.

For if there is one element, above all, that is now needed to restore sanity to banking, it is that policy makers, bankers, and
politicians must adopt a more holistic vision of finance. In essence, what is needed is a return to the seemingly dull virtues of prudence, moderation,
balance, and common sense.”

Page 252 of “Fools' Gold” by Jillian Jett.