The Ethics of Banking: Conclusions from the Financial Crisis (Issues ...

158 10 Disturbance of the Invisible Hand
Credit and Credo, Economic Success and “Manifest Destiny”
The connection between placing faith and trust in someone and giving them credit
is obvious even linguistically in the common root of the word in the Latin verb
“credere”, to believe. To be trusted with credit, an individual must be believable,
credible. There is a relationship between financial capitalism and religion, not in the
sense that capitalism itself is a religion – which is a nonsense because nobody but
fools could regard capitalism as divine – but in the sense that the religious interpretation
of life and the world has repercussions for the interpretation of business,
finance and economic action, and vice versa.
If credit is given to someone whom one believes able to repay the debts, believers
will more readily believe this of people who share their own religious convictions.
Therefore, in the past, credit was often given only to members of the same religious
community. This again highlights that a globalized credit market which lacks any
close proximity to the communities in which business takes place ought to have less
of a basis for trust, and give less credit, than smaller, less complex societies with
more uniformity of religious persuasion.
However, it is not only religion that matters to the credit market in this context,
but also faith in the future and the interpretation of economic success. In a society
with universal or at least widespread confidence in the future and a belief in constant
growth, there is also a greater belief that loans will be repaid in due time.
The USA as a country is particularly credit-friendly and has great faith in credit.
In part this goes back to America’s Calvinist tradition. Switzerland’s reformed
Christianity and American Calvinism, which came together as one denomination,
are the first Christian denomination and probably the first religion of any kind to
view and approve of credit and lending at interest as something positive. The Swiss
theologian Heinrich Bullinger was the first to defend interest.
Bullinger approves of economic activity, but also seeks to find the right yardstick
for financial and credit transactions. All economic activities must be for mutual benefit.
Taking undue advantage must be prevented. Mutual benefit and the prohibition
of theft are the criteria of economic activity. Cheating and fraud (“Beschiss und
Betrug”) are forms of theft, in Bullinger’s view, and need to be prevented. 18
He therefore distinguishes two types of interest: the unconscionable, usurious
kind and the “honest” kind. He begins to use the word “usury”, which had previously
always been synonymous with “interest”, for the harmful form only, whereas
in Scholastic theology any interest-taking was usury. Even the lender’s sacrificed
utility, an argument that Scholastic thinkers and most notably Thomas Aquinas 19
18 Thus MARTIN HOHL: “Heinrich Bullinger als Ökonom” [Heinrich Bullinger as an economist],
stab. Stiftung für Abendländische Bildung und Kultur, Rundbrief 149 (2006), online: http://
www.stab-ch.org/index.php?page=rundbrief-149. – Cf. also WILHELM A. SCHULZE: “DieLehre
Bullingers vom Zins” [Bullinger’s theory of interest], Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 48
(1957), pp. 225–229.
19 Cf.P.KOSLOWSKI: “Ethische Ökonomie und theologische Deutung der Gesamtwirklichkeit in
der Summa Theologiae des Thomas von Aquin” [Ethical economy and theological interpretation