Banks were once kept on a tight leash, but almost four decades of neo-liberal free market ideology let them loose on the global economy. The financial crisis of 2008, which continues today, showed how banks can be a danger to society, to their own shareholders, and cause harm to the poorest in developed nations as well as the Global South. Only bank executives, it seems, are untroubled by the ensuing economic and social turmoil. Can banks be domesticated to serve society, protect the environment, spread prosperity and uphold social justice? Why is banking totally unlike other industries? Do the roots of instability and injustice lie deep in the very nature of modern money? Tony Greenham is a former investment banker turned social and environmental campaigner. He heads the Business and Finance Programme at nef (the new economics foundation), advises the board of grassroots movement the Transition Network, and also sits on the government’s Regional Growth Fund advisory panel.
2011 Cafes
- Can the EU survive the crisis?
- The Financialisation of Food: Commodity Markets And Human Hunger
- Pakistan: A failing and dangerous state?
- A Scramble for Resources? The contemporary geopolitics of the Arctic
- Khadafi, Fleet Street and Libya’s fluctuating relationship with the West
- Indonesia and the promise of democracy in the Muslim world
- A steady-state economy: Should we? Could we?
- Why we should document every casualty of conflict
- Algeria and the impact of the Jasmine Revolution
- Dangerous banks: can we tame them?
- Crisis in Kyrgyzstan & the struggle for the control of Central Asia
- Saudi Arabia – What’s wrong with its relationship with the West
- Privatisation of public services: what’s wrong with it?
- Sarah Palin : why is she so popular?