VATICAN CITY (CNS): The global financial crisis and the worldwide recession it triggered have demonstrated that allowing financial markets to self-regulate does not serve national interests and the good of the international community, a Vatican official said.
“The international community cannot let the financial system continue being a source of global economic instability; it must urgently take measures to prevent the outbreak of other financial crises in the future,” the Vatican’s permanent observer to United Nations agencies based in Geneva Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said.
The archbishop made his comments on April 22 during a top-level meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, which was being held in Doha, Qatar.
The 2008 financial crisis “marked a turning point for the world economy”, Archbishop Tomasi said.
“In particular, the subsequent global economic recession has eliminated at least 30 million jobs around the world,” according to statistics from the International Labor Organisation.
“The enjoyment of fundamental economic and social rights by countless persons has been compromised, including the right to food, water, decent work, education and health,” Archbishop Tomasi said.
He said the financial crisis and the global recession had taught both rich and poor countries that they could face “serious social, political and economic costs if the financial markets are left to regulate themselves”.
The good of the human person must be at the centre of economic activity and economic policy, he said. And for that to happen, development must be “employment oriented”.
Archbishop Tomasi questioned the practical benefits for nations and individuals of what was known as “jobless growth” in the economies of the world’s richest countries.
Work was not just an activity that produced a product or service and earned a person wages, the archbishop said; it was essential to human dignity because it gave a person a sense of worth and allowed people to contribute to the good of their families and societies.
Efforts to promote development also must recognise the central role of education, he said.
“If young minds, the future of our society, are not sufficiently prepared, millions will not be able to enter the labour market of tomorrow,” he said.
Education also was the key to giving an individual an awareness of his or her responsibility and potential for contributing to a healthy, sustainable, ethical economy, he said.
The UN’s efforts to forge a stronger partnership between developed and developing countries, he said, also must look at ways “to reduce the excessive volatility of food commodity prices” because the international trade of food products “has consequences on the daily nutrition and life of the poorest people in the world, and carries therefore a strong ethical dimension”, Archbishop Tomasi said.
The archbishop reiterated the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessors that because the economy and financial markets are human activities, they have moral and ethical implications.
“Ethical values such as transparency, honesty, solidarity and responsibility cannot be ignored: They preserve a person-centred goal in any economic activity, prevent crises caused by greedy speculation and provide a comprehensive approach that does not separate the social consequences from economic and environmental decisions,” he told the conference.
