Bank robbers and asset strippers

The two English archbishops of the Anglican church have not always been known for their realistic points of view. But sometimes they too see the light.

Writing in the Spectator, archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams attacked "paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders".

Dr Williams focused on the financial industry's trading of debts, which he said had "without accountability... been the motor of astronomical financial gain for many in recent years". He said the current financial crisis "exposes the element of basic unreality in the situation - the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders".

He said: "The biggest challenge in the present crisis is whether we can recover some sense of the connection between money and material reality - the production of specific things, the achievement of recognisably human goals that have something to do with a shared sense of what is good for the human community in the widest sense."

Quotes from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7634641.stm.

Dr John Sentamu, archbishop of York, told a room full of bankers that short sellers (people who who sell borrowed shares, betting that prices will fall before they have to buy them them back) are "bank robbers and asset strippers".

Right he is, of course he is , but let's not forget that "they are just one small part of a big thieving machine that gambles with other people's lives and livelihoods to make a quick buck. Why pick on them particularly? Yes, they deserve it, but no more than the company executive that moves production from the UK to China because labour is cheap and the workers can't organize or fight for their rights."

These quotes comes from http://www.blog.co.uk/search.php?word=short-selling+john-sentamu&category=tagpost.