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

Purpose and Task of the Credit Market 23
by having someone else pay instead.” 4 A passage found in the writings of Augustine
of Hippo declares that God not only grants remission of debts but makes himself the
debitor. 5 Nietzsche takes up this idea: in Christianity, the creditor sacrifices himself
for the debtor, “God sacrificing himself for man’s debt, none other than God paying
himself back, God as the only one able to redeem man from what, to man himself,
has become irredeemable, the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor, out of
love (would you credit it?), out of love for his debtor!...” 6 Phenomena like the economic
relief of debt, the remission of payments to a later date and debt relief rituals,
according to Waldenfels, are the “extraordinary fringe” that surrounds normality. 7
Task of the Bank: Transforming Time Periods and Bearing Risk
The pooling of risks by the bank is simultaneously a pooling of investment time
horizons. The transformation of financial resources that are made available for lowrisk
investment and over very disparate time horizons into investments carrying high
risks, also over disparate time periods, makes it necessary for banks to perform a
dual task of transformation:
In order to transform deposits into loans, banks must
(1) transform disparate and sometimes very short-term deposit periods into shortterm
and long-term loans, and they must also
(2) transform the different attitudes to risk by mediating the risk on both sides of
their balance sheet. They must mediate the different attitudes to risk both among
their deposit customers or creditors and between their borrowers or debtors. 8
4 Quoted after NICK PAUMGARTEN: “The Death of Kings. Notes from a Meltdown,” The
New Yorker, May 18, 2009, (Annals of Finance), pp. 40–57, here p. 49. Paumgarten refers to
MARGARET ATWOOD: Payback. Debt as Metaphor and the Shadow Side of Wealth, London
(Bloomsbury) 2008. – The author has shown this connection between obligations and debt relief
with reference to the “satisfaction theory of redemption”, a theory of the assumption of debt by
a third party for the satisfaction of the creditor. Cf. P. KOSLOWSKI: “Schuldverhältnisse”, in:
MARCO M. OLIVETTI (ed.): Le don et la dette, Padova (CEDAM e Biblioteca dell’«Archivio di
filosofia») 2005, pp. 421–436, and PETER KOSLOWSKI,FRIEDRICH HERMANNI (eds.): Endangst
und Erlösung 1. Untergang, ewiges Leben und Vollendung der Geschichte in Philosophie und
Theologie, Munich (W. Fink) 2009, andPETER KOSLOWSKI (ed.): Endangst und Erlösung
2. Rechtfertigung, Vergeltung, Vergebung in Philosophie und Theologie, Munich (W. Fink), in
preparation 2010. – Paumgarten concludes his article with the statement: “Capitalism without
bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.” (ibid., p. 57).
5 AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO, Confessiones V, 9, 17.
6 NIETZSCHE, Genealogie der Moral, 2. Abhandlung, § 21, KSA 5, 331. Saint Augustine
and Nietzsche cited after: BERNHARD WALDENFELS: “Geschenkte und geschuldete
Aufmerksamkeit”, in: MARCO M. OLIVETTI (ed.): Le don et la dette, Padova (CEDAM
e Biblioteca dell’«Archivio di filosofia») 2005, p. 301; quotation from Nietzsche’s second essay
after: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson, trans.
Carol Diethe, CUP 1994/2007, p. 63.
7 Ibid., p. 303.
8 Cf. also NIKLAS LUHMANN: “Kapitalismus und Utopie”, Merkur,48(1994), H. 3, p. 191.