| title page | The
Calvinist Church-Room and the Amorality of Financial Markets
The core element of this
Doctor’s thesis is an understanding of the mentality of financial markets.
To this aim, I have made interviews in Swedish merchant banks and mutual
funds.
The purpose of my research is to study the way in which the ethics of a society forms its economy. I take an interest in the ethical impact on society from financial markets. I study the increasing importance of financial markets, which is partly caused by changing ethics in society, in a direction that might be called libertarian. De-regulation of the financial industry is a symptom of this changed attitude, and gives room for the increased importance. As relevant pieces of ethic in society I find the degree of secularisation and materialism, the attitude towards business activities in general and degree of risk-aversion among the public. The attitudes of people in general towards financial markets, as well as the ethics of actors in financial markets might be searched for. National and cultural differences are of major relevance. Questions posed will be such as, if the acceptance of financial markets is higher in Protestant countries than in Catholic counterparts. What is explained simply by differing stages of economic development and what can be traced to socio-ethical differences? Which responsibility - if any - does an investor in financial markets have for the common good? What was once regarded as betting - e.g. Financial derivatives - has received increased social acceptability. A prominent example of this is the vast deregulation of financial markets taking place in the 1980s around the Capitalist world. After the laissez-faire 1980s, the present decade is characterised by a re-integration of the financial system into community. Few are, however, those who argue for prohibition of derivative instruments. Regulation is the compromising alternative. Supporters of regulation aspire making the financial system a better servant to social utility than what is presently the case. Arguments against speculation and more generally against charging interest has historically been stated in a religious context, as immoral. The still continuing secularisation is accordingly a factor behind the evolving acceptance of financial activities. One pre-condition for the increased importance of financial markets is fiat money becoming the main elementary particle in society. In financial derivatives monetary, not physical, products is the basis for value. Investment opportunities in "real" activities have decreased. Financial markets is a key business in post-industrial society. Derivative instruments are abstracted from the production of physical goods. Is this a decadence symptom in capitalist economies, in what before the fall of the Soviet block was called a "later stage of capitalism"? I take a historical perspective
by comparing today with the religious fundaments of early capitalism, where
the Weber thesis
of ascetic Protestantism being a basis for capitalism is of main importance.
Is the evolution of capitalism still guided by a Puritan ethic? By all
means, the striving for wealth has lost its religious and ethical gist.
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