Financial & Theological Language
This is a story out of the WSJ around the words of a Wall Street Financier, Henry Clews, in 1908.
“As in every preceding crisis, the main cause was far too large a mass of credits — that is, of debts — for the amount of cash in which they were redeemable. Trade and speculation had long been so active, and too often recklessly expanded, that this disproportion had become dangerous, and a menace to our safety…a serious reaction, a serious revulsion, was inevitable unless we moderated our pace and mended our ways..I could foresee that this vast and growing disproportion between the volume of credits and cash would finally lead to collapse.”
Notice the language of the expansion and that of the contraction. It is all moral language. Reckless, menace, serious revulsion…moderated and mended our ways. The picture is one of sin and redemption - confession and absolution.
Money is just one of the ways in life, one of the sternest, that we can see the law at work. When we have transgressed the law, the reckoning always comes, although we can often delay it for a while. The law shows us our recklessness, our menace, our revulsion, but it also points to the way out. Moderate and mend. Turn and be healed.
Money as morality play. Many enlightened people would sniff at this conception today, but it is part of how we are made. If we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us…
