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From The Times

February 8, 2008

Jeanette Winterson imagines a reading list for capitalists

A FRIEND OF MINE HAD A TERRIBLE dream in which she was marooned on an island and menaced by penguins, pelicans and too-big ladybirds. Fortunately, she had a good Jungian analyst, who pointed out that these oppressive creatures were all books.

Right now, I would like to put every City trader and master-of-the universe banker into an offshore penal colony where they would have to make their own clothes out of copies of The Wall Street Journal, cook a ration of rice in a dung-oven, and read at least one important book a day. I think they can all begin with Das Kapital, not because Marxism is a viable economic model, but because the rich West urgently needs to remember that making money is neither an end in itself, nor an activity that commands respect.

Marx said, rather wonderfully, that socialism should meet Man's animal needs, so that Man could get on with the task of meeting his human needs. Money is part of the picture; it is not the point of being alive.

I find myself writing this because I have just paid my tax bill, and while I am happy to help fund all of the things we need - education, hospitals, social services, I am dismayed that we can afford fewer and fewer of the things that we really need, as a human society, because we are either spending vast amounts of our tax receipts on futile wars - sorry, that should read, on freedom and democracy, and if not on bombs, then bombed-out banks: Northern Rock and SocGen, the sub-prime debacle. Sorry, these are not bombed-out banks, they are models in need of restructuring, and they offer exciting business opportunities.

I look in the papers and I find that the routine misuse of language that tries to cover up our moral vacuity is now so common that it passes for truth. Chomsky has a lot to say about this; the compendium Understanding Power could make for a worthwhile breakfast meeting

While I can see that there may be a case for deceiving others, why are we deceiving ourselves? Why are we pretending that Kerviel is a “rogue trader”, an “outsider”? The headline is always the same, yet the facts tell a different story. Yes, he was operating outside his position, and he was covering his tracks, but his trades and his methods were typical of modern brokerage. Those of us not in banking - most of us - still have an idea that trading is about spotting value in companies, or being alert to less-than-value, and acting accordingly to enhance or protect funds. In fact, modern trading is just casino betting given respectability; Kerviel made his money - and lost it - betting on market movements. Heads it goes up, tails it goes down. In fact SocGen has probably used the K incident to hide the embarrassment of a huge sub-prime “write-down”.

So it's a good time to read a few people for whom writing something down is a gain to humanity, not another fiscal black hole.

R.D. Laing's The Divided Self is bracing for those who prefer the “rogue” on the outside, where he belongs, so that we don't have to look at the rottenness of the system itself, or our own complicity in it. “We are all murderers and prostitutes” might seem a bit strong, but in the morally weakened West we will turn a blind eye to anything as long as it makes money and as long as we don't get caught.

When it goes wrong, we bag a scapegoat, and yap about “controls”. The Prime Minister gives “guarantees”. Meanwhile MPs “forget” to declare donations, or spend public money on nightclub research for their kids.

My godchild Eleanor, who is 11, recently built a virtual Hell. Fair enough, she had been tackling Dante in a prose translation, and we talked quite a bit about how society develops its moral and ethical code, which for the sake of civilisation, has to be more than a penal code.

Eleanor's Hell swarmed with streets of people ignoring each other or throwing up (she lives in Spitalfields in London). There's an abattoir, Bernard Matthews turkeys, a weapons plant called Protection, a child-labour sweatshop and its fancy high street outlet, and...Northern Rock. When I asked her what these things had in common, she said that Hell is a place where nobody gives a stuff about how much unhappiness they cause, as long as they are having a good time and/or making money.

Pity they didn't have copies of Inferno at Davos.

I have always heard that the "Free Market" is the most efficient engine for creating wealth known to human history. I could grant that but would like to ask in return: Who decided, or decreed, that creating wealth is the sole (or even highest) human activity?

J Rosen, Jersey City NJ

PS And I'd like to ask economists and business-people why they persist in conceiving of producers and consumers as separate entities.

J Rosen, Jersey City, USA /New Jersey

"...but because the rich West urgently needs to remember that making money is neither an end in itself, nor an activity that commands respect."

Says you.

Are you planning on forcing that down the throat of people who may politely disagree with you? I myself do not neccessarily argue with that position, but I would fight to the death to allow people in this country to do as they wish with their lives.

You on the other hand seem very comfortable telling (and perhaps ordering) people what to do with theirs.

This is the main failing of the political left, which I ashamedly am a part of as well.

/sigh

Jeff, Yakima,

Binge Lending and Regulated Markets

Having inked $$ billions of deals and met folks destined for both the White House and for jail I would like voters (and economists) to know:
"The gross dollar value of the rank waste and economic inefficiencies in 'big boy' capitalism is more than sufficient to many times fund both Social Security and Medicare shortfalls."
When the financial types declaim that there isn't enough money to pay taxes or to provide a broad safety net for the disenfranchised of our society tell them to shut their greedy yaps. Offer them this deal.
"You make sure the poor can eat and get medical necessities and we'll let you take a small bite out of capital flows that wash around financial centers, including embezzlement like bonuses for bubble-like ponzi-smacking fiasco(s). But, recognize that the Pound and Euro, value markers for those "Socialist Europeans" are hands down spanking the dollar.
Change is needed. The broom is in your hands.
"For the moment!"

Craig Johnson cognitorex, Dalton, ma