Two days after the anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891), two dicasteries of the Roman Curia—the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development—published a new document titled Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones: Considerations for an ethical discernment on certain aspects of the current economic-financial system. Its thirty-four paragraphs go from general moral principles to practical proposals for reforming the international financial system.
Addressed “to all men and women of good will,” the document presents an analysis of the financial system in light of the crisis that began in 2007. The key message of the document is that the financial industry is incapable of governing itself adequately; “appropriate regulation” will require government intervention. As it is, the system is unsafe. It aggravates inequality and thrives on the exploitation of the weak and the poor. The document even calls the financial products known as derivatives “a ticking time bomb ready sooner or later to explode, poisoning the health of the markets.”
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