On the Morality of Banking, the Exploitation Tradition and the New Challenges of the Global Financial Crisis

The morality of banking needs to be extended beyond the exploitation tradition to encompass new practices in the banking sector, such as the resale of bad debts, and needs to focus on the collective nature of the harms caused by immoral financial practices. Whereas the concept of desperate exchange must remain an element of any proper morality of banking and finance, it cannot cover all that is required. Equally, the tradition of moral rearmament that solely focuses on inculcating moral attitudes is also inadequate, not merely because of its excessively optimistic view of the role of moral exhortation but also because of the failure to conceptualise adequately the relationship between morality and the profit motive. A new framework is developed here.