"Doutrina Católica para Justificar Gastança Pública é como usar Michelangelo para justificar Pornografia"

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Gostei muito deste texto de Anthony Esolen publicado na Crisis Magazine:

Catholic Social Teaching: It’s Time to End the Misrepresentations

Imagine someone appealing to Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, to justify the activities of gangs in Los Angeles. Why not?  Lord Baden-Powell wanted boys to do risky things, and what’s more dangerous than running guns or smuggling cocaine or fighting another gang in a shooting spree?  He enjoined upon the Scouts a stern code of honor and loyalty, and who is more loyal than a new recruit for the Crips?  Who is more willing to shed his blood for the honor of the gang?

Imagine someone appealing to Michelangelo to justify porn.  Why not?  Michelangelo painted nudes all over the Sistine Chapel, and Hustler and Penthouse are full of nudes.  Michelangelo endured the disgruntlement of the prudish, so that the figures in his Last Judgment were later provided with discreet veils and tunics and loincloths.  And aren’t Hustler and Penthouse stuck underneath the counter at convenience stores?  Michelangelo admired the sculpture of ancient Greece; those ancient Greeks, for their part, traded in vases depicting acts of pedophilia.  So why should a busy stockbroker in a hotel not be allowed to relax in front of a television, watching whatever delights his sophisticated tastes?

Imagine someone appealing to Florence Nightingale to justify doctor-dosed suicide.  She wanted to relieve suffering, didn’t she?  Imagine someone appealing to Saint Francis of Assisi to justify looting for fun and profit.  His heart was with the poor, no?  Imagine someone appealing to Saint Catherine of Siena to justify the modern feminist.  Why, Saint Catherine dared to rebuke cardinals and popes!

Imagine a lawyer returning his fee when he loses a case; imagine a television pundit suddenly admitting that he doesn’t know what he is talking about; imagine a Hollywood starlet speaking English; imagine the Cubs winning the World Series; imagine anything most absurd, and you have not yet approached the absurdity of those who claim that Catholic Social Teaching implies the existence of a vast welfare state, bureaucratically organized, unanswerable to the people, undermining families, rewarding lust and sloth and envy, acknowledging no virtue, providing no personal care, punishing women who take care of their children at home, whisking the same children away from parental supervision and into schools designed to separate them from their parents’ views of the world, and, for all that, keeping whole segments of the population mired in a cycle of dysfunction, moral squalor, and poverty, while purchasing their votes with money squeezed by force from their neighbors.

I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of hearing that Catholic teaching regarding sex and marriage is one thing, in that old-fashioned trinket box over there, while Catholic teaching regarding stewardship and our duties to the poor is another thing, on that marble pedestal over here.  I’m sick of hearing that Catholic teaching regarding the Church and her authority is one thing, the embarrassing Latinate red-edged tome tucked away in that closet, while Catholic teaching regarding the laity is another, and pass that bread this way!  No, it is all of a piece.  What the Church says about divorce is inextricable from what she says about the poor.  What she says about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is inextricable from what she says about the respects in which all men are created equal—and the many respects in which she insists upon a salutary inequality.  When we fail to see the integrity of the faith, not only do certain truths escape our notice; the rest, the truths we think we see, grow monstrous, like cancers, and work to destroy the flesh they once seemed to replace.
Pope Leo XIII is credited as being the founder of Catholic Social Teaching.  He would have been appalled by the credit.  He intended nothing other than to apply to current concerns what Jesus taught his apostles and what they handed down to their successors.  His thoughts prescind not from the nature of the spanking new modern state, nor from social advances sometimes more apparent than real, but from the changeless nature of man, discoverable both by reason and by humble attention to the revealed word of God.  Leo never supposed that one could devise any Social Teaching without understanding what a society is to begin with, which requires that we understand what human beings are, and why they are—for what end God made them, male and female, in His image and likeness.  Leo surveys the world from the mountaintop of the faith—not from the mercurial ingenuity of a vain scholar, or the meddlesome pride of an innovator.

In this series, I shall discuss exactly what Pope Leo XIII had to say, when the name of “socialism” first burst upon the ear, and apply it to current controversies and miseries.  His words sting like the first antiseptics, carbolic acid and iodine.  They sting, but they cleanse.  Or perhaps we should prefer to lay honey to our wounds?

Let’s begin at the beginning, with Inscrutabili (1878).  Here Leo inveighs against a radical secularism which seeks, by calumny, to bring the Church of God into odium, resulting in laws that obstruct bishops in their duties, and confiscate “property that was once the support of the Church’s ministers and of the poor.”  That confiscation detaches “public institutions, vowed to charity and benevolence, … from the wholesome control of the Church.”  Leo sees the connection between this seizure and a spreading amoralism among the young, whose education is also removed from the Church’s purview.

Note that well.  It is a gross violation of the Church’s Social Teaching, to wrest her schools from her direction.  Do you hear, Catholics of Ontario?  It is a gross violation of the Church’s Social Teaching, to demand that she cooperate in the State’s evil of the day if she is to continue to exercise charity for the poor and the orphaned.  Are you listening, Catholics of Massachusetts?  It is a gross violation of the Church’s Social Teaching, to suborn her institutions to assist the state in perverting the natural law, severing sex from marriage and snuffing out the life of the newly conceived.  Do you understand that principle, Americans first and nominal Catholics later?  The Church claims her liberty.  Deny her that liberty, and you will soon find the chains chafing your own wrists.  Begin as nominally Catholic, end as nominally free.

Don’t suppose that the Pope is merely grumbling.  He knows that one cannot build anything upon the secularist sands: “It is perfectly clear and evident, Venerable Brothers, that the very notion of a civilization is a fiction of the brain if it rest not on the abiding principles of truth and the unchanging laws of virtue and justice, and if unfeigned love knit not together the wills of men, and gently control the interchange and the character of their mutual service.”

Let’s pause a moment, catch our breath, and think hard about what he’s just said.  Catholics often hear that we intend to “impose our morality” upon our neighbors, and that this can’t be done in a truly free, that is to say thoroughly secular society.  Set aside the plain fact that all law imposes a moral vision, though it is seldom consistent or adequate, and it is sometimes perverse.  The fact is, morality admits no peculiar possessives.  If a morality is only mine, it isn’t morality but meaningless predilection.  Either a moral law exists, applying to everyone at all times, or it doesn’t.  If it doesn’t, there is no moral reason to prefer civilization to savagery; the latter can be a lot more fun.  But we won’t have that choice anyway, because we will lose civilization itself.  What we now call “civilization” and “culture,” Pope Leo calls “a fiction of the brain,” a vain idea, when the reality is gone.

That loss of morality understood as what we receive, not what we create; not what shackles us, but what sets us free to realize our human potential, implies already the loss of “unfeigned love” which should knit together “the wills of men, and gently control the interchange and the character of their mutual service.”  We must insist upon this connection.  I cannot give amoral love.  But human beings need love; they need the love that brings them deeper into the truth.

An unmarried friend of mine is with child.  That’s not good.  But the child needs love, and the mother and father need to return to a world of moral law—the real world, not the fantasy islands of hedonism.  They too need love.  That’s where the Church and the faithful Christian come in.  So we do, if we’re given half a chance!  It is calumny to say that we care only about fetuses and not about families.  But the secular state cares for neither.  The secular state is an amoral cash extractor and dispenser.  If the mother repeats the wrong, more money comes.  If she and the father try to right the wrong by marrying, they risk losing the money.  She can leave the child fatherless and, most of the day, motherless by going to work, and the state will pay.  None of this is oriented towards virtue.  Therefore none of it is really social; no more than rust is steel.

Does Catholic Social Teaching mandate such a thing?  Do architects build with rust?

A Visão Católica Chegou no FMI?

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O analista do The Telegraph chamou isto de 'O Plano para Eliminar as Dívidas e Destronar os Banqueiros".

Ele está falando de um paper do FMI que diz que a solução para a crise é o governo retomar o controle do dinheiro, elimando dos bancos a capacidade de criar dinheiro do nada.

Ué, eu já li esta proposta várias vezes dentro do Distributismo.

Leiam o texto de Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers

One could slash private debt by 100pc of GDP, boost growth, stabilize prices, and dethrone bankers all at the same time. It could be done cleanly and painlessly, by legislative command, far more quickly than anybody imagined.

The conjuring trick is to replace our system of private bank-created money -- roughly 97pc of the money supply -- with state-created money. We return to the historical norm, before Charles II placed control of the money supply in private hands with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.

Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air.

The nation regains sovereign control over the money supply. There are no more banks runs, and fewer boom-bust credit cycles. Accounting legerdemain will do the rest. That at least is the argument.

Some readers may already have seen the IMF study, by Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof, which came out in August and has begun to acquire a cult following around the world.

Entitled "The Chicago Plan Revisited", it revives the scheme first put forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative thinking in the late Depression.

Irving Fisher thought credit cycles led to an unhealthy concentration of wealth. He saw it with his own eyes in the early 1930s as creditors foreclosed on destitute farmers, seizing their land or buying it for a pittance at the bottom of the cycle.

The farmers found a way of defending themselves in the end. They muscled together at "one dollar auctions", buying each other's property back for almost nothing. Any carpet-bagger who tried to bid higher was beaten to a pulp.
Benes and Kumhof argue that credit-cycle trauma - caused by private money creation - dates deep into history and lies at the root of debt jubilees in the ancient religions of Mesopotian and the Middle East.
Harvest cycles led to systemic defaults thousands of years ago, with forfeiture of collateral, and concentration of wealth in the hands of lenders. These episodes were not just caused by weather, as long thought. They were amplified by the effects of credit.

The Athenian leader Solon implemented the first known Chicago Plan/New Deal in 599 BC to relieve farmers in hock to oligarchs enjoying private coinage. He cancelled debts, restituted lands seized by creditors, set floor-prices for commodities (much like Franklin Roosevelt), and consciously flooded the money supply with state-issued "debt-free" coinage.

The Romans sent a delegation to study Solon's reforms 150 years later and copied the ideas, setting up their own fiat money system under Lex Aternia in 454 BC.

It is a myth - innocently propagated by the great Adam Smith - that money developed as a commodity-based or gold-linked means of exchange. Gold was always highly valued, but that is another story. Metal-lovers often conflate the two issues.

Anthropological studies show that social fiat currencies began with the dawn of time. The Spartans banned gold coins, replacing them with iron disks of little intrinsic value. The early Romans used bronze tablets. Their worth was entirely determined by law - a doctrine made explicit by Aristotle in his Ethics - like the dollar, the euro, or sterling today.

Some argue that Rome began to lose its solidarity spirit when it allowed an oligarchy to develop a private silver-based coinage during the Punic Wars. Money slipped control of the Senate. You could call it Rome's shadow banking system. Evidence suggests that it became a machine for elite wealth accumulation.
Unchallenged sovereign or Papal control over currencies persisted through the Middle Ages until England broke the mould in 1666. Benes and Kumhof say this was the start of the boom-bust era.

One might equally say that this opened the way to England's agricultural revolution in the early 18th Century, the industrial revolution soon after, and the greatest economic and technological leap ever seen. But let us not quibble.

The original authors of the Chicago Plan were responding to the Great Depression. They believed it was possible to prevent the social havoc caused by wild swings from boom to bust, and to do so without crimping economic dynamism.

The benign side-effect of their proposals would be a switch from national debt to national surplus, as if by magic. "Because under the Chicago Plan banks have to borrow reserves from the treasury to fully back liabilities, the government acquires a very large asset vis-à-vis banks. Our analysis finds that the government is left with a much lower, in fact negative, net debt burden."

The IMF paper says total liabilities of the US financial system - including shadow banking - are about 200pc of GDP. The new reserve rule would create a windfall. This would be used for a "potentially a very large, buy-back of private debt", perhaps 100pc of GDP.

While Washington would issue much more fiat money, this would not be redeemable. It would be an equity of the commonwealth, not debt.

The key of the Chicago Plan was to separate the "monetary and credit functions" of the banking system. "The quantity of money and the quantity of credit would become completely independent of each other."
Private lenders would no longer be able to create new deposits "ex nihilo". New bank credit would have to be financed by retained earnings.

"The control of credit growth would become much more straightforward because banks would no longer be able, as they are today, to generate their own funding, deposits, in the act of lending, an extraordinary privilege that is not enjoyed by any other type of business," says the IMF paper.

"Rather, banks would become what many erroneously believe them to be today, pure intermediaries that depend on obtaining outside funding before being able to lend."

The US Federal Reserve would take real control over the money supply for the first time, making it easier to manage inflation. It was precisely for this reason that Milton Friedman called for 100pc reserve backing in 1967. Even the great free marketeer implicitly favoured a clamp-down on private money.

The switch would engender a 10pc boost to long-arm economic output. "None of these benefits come at the expense of diminishing the core useful functions of a private financial system."

Simons and Fisher were flying blind in the 1930s. They lacked the modern instruments needed to crunch the numbers, so the IMF team has now done it for them -- using the `DSGE' stochastic model now de rigueur in high economics, loved and hated in equal measure.

The finding is startling. Simons and Fisher understated their claims. It is perhaps possible to confront the banking plutocracy head without endangering the economy.

Benes and Kumhof make large claims. They leave me baffled, to be honest. Readers who want the technical details can make their own judgement by studying the text here.

The IMF duo have supporters. Professor Richard Werner from Southampton University - who coined the term quantitative easing (QE) in the 1990s -- testified to Britain's Vickers Commission that a switch to state-money would have major welfare gains. He was backed by the campaign group Positive Money and the New Economics Foundation.

The theory also has strong critics. Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research says banks are in a sense already being forced to increase reserves by EU rules, Basel III rules, and gold-plated variants in the UK. The effect has been to choke lending to the private sector.

He argues that is the chief reason why the world economy remains stuck in near-slump, and why central banks are having to cushion the shock with QE.

"If you enacted this plan, it would devastate bank profits and cause a massive deflationary disaster. There would have to do `QE squared' to offset it," he said.

The result would be a huge shift in bank balance sheets from private lending to government securities. This happened during World War Two, but that was the anomalous cost of defeating Fascism.

To do this on a permanent basis in peace-time would be to change in the nature of western capitalism. "People wouldn't be able to get money from banks. There would be huge damage to the efficiency of the economy," he said.

Arguably, it would smother freedom and enthrone a Leviathan state. It might be even more irksome in the long run than rule by bankers.

Personally, I am a long way from reaching an conclusion in this extraordinary debate. Let it run, and let us all fight until we flush out the arguments.

One thing is sure. The City of London will have great trouble earning its keep if any variant of the Chicago Plan ever gains wide support.

Economia do Desejo: Cristianismo e Capitalismo

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Foi lançado o livro The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World, de Daniel M. Bell.

Muito interessante. O site Center for Law and Religion Forum relata que:

Bell engages the work of two important postmodern philosophers, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, to illuminate the nature of the postmodern world that the church currently inhabits. He considers how the global economy deforms desire in a manner that distorts human relations with God and one another. In contrast, he presents Christianity and the tradition of the works of mercy as a way beyond capitalism and socialism, beyond philanthropy and welfare. Christianity heals desire, renewing human relations and enabling communion with God. This book will work well for courses in theology and ethics, philosophical theology, discipleship, and Christianity and culture. Pastors and church leaders will also find it enlightening.


Este eu vou comprar.

Padre Barron e os dois pilares da Doutrina Social da Igreja

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O grande padre Robert Barron, o homem que nos conduziu na grande série Catholicism e que costuma tecer opniões no seu site Word on Fire, escreve um artigo sobre os dois pilares do pensamento social da Igreja Católica: subsidiaridade e solidaridade, para o site Real Clear Religion, relacionando este assunto com a escolha do católico Paul Ryan para candidato a vice-presidente na chapa de Mitt Romney, contra Obama.

Texto abaixo:

The Great Bi-Polar Catholicism

By Father Robert Barron

For many on the left, Paul Ryan is a menace, the very embodiment of cold, indifferent Republicanism, and for many on the right, he is a knight in shining armor, a God-fearing advocate of a principled conservatism.

Mitt Romney's choice of Ryan as running mate has already triggered the worst kind of exaggerated hoo-hah on both sides of the political debate. What is most interesting, from my perspective, is that Ryan, a devout Catholic, has claimed the social doctrine of the Church as the principal inspiration for his policies. Whether you stand with First Things and affirm that such a claim is coherent or with Commonweal and affirm that it is absurd, Ryan's assertion prompts a healthy thinking-through of Catholic social teaching in the present economic and political context.

Ryan himself has correctly identified two principles as foundational for Catholic social thought, namely subsidiarity and solidarity. The first, implied throughout the whole of Catholic social theory but given clearest expression in Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, is that in the adjudication of matters political and economic, a preferential option should be given to the more local level of authority.

For example, when seeking to solve a traffic-flow issue in a suburb, appeal should be made to the municipal authority and not to the governor, even less to the Congress or the President. Only when a satisfactory solution is not achieved by the local government should one move to the next highest level of authority, etc.

This principle by no means calls into question the legitimacy of an over-arching federal power (something you sense in the more extreme advocates of the Tea Party), but it does indeed involve a prejudice in favor of the local. The principle of subsidiarity is implied in much of the "small is beautiful" movement as well as in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, which exhibits a steady mistrust of imperial power and a steady sympathy for the local, the neighborhood, the small business.

Now in Catholic social theory, subsidiarity is balanced by solidarity, which is to say, a keen sense of the common good, of the natural and supernatural connections that bind us to one another, of our responsibility for each other. I vividly remember former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's speech  before the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco in 1984, in the course of which he effectively lampooned the idea that individual self-interest set utterly free would automatically redound to the general welfare.

Catholic social thought does indeed stand athwart such "invisible hand" theorizing. It also recognizes that, always in accord with subsidiarity, sometimes the federal and state governments are the legitimate vehicles by which social solidarity is achieved. Does anyone today, outside of the most extreme circles, really advocate the repeal of Social Security, unemployment compensation, medical benefits for the elderly, food stamp programs, etc.?

Solidarity without subsidiarity can easily devolve into a kind of totalitarianism whereby "justice" is achieved either through outright manipulation and intimidation or through more subtle forms of social engineering. But subsidiarity without solidarity can result in a society marked by rampant individualism, a Gordon Gekko "greed is good" mentality, and an Ayn Rand/Nietzschean "objectivism" that positively celebrates the powerful person's dominance of the weak.

Catholic social theory involves the subtle balancing of these two great principles so as to avoid these two characteristic pitfalls. It does, for example, consistently advocate the free market, entrepreneurial enterprise, profit-making; and it holds out against all forms of Marxism and extreme socialism. But it also insists that the market be circumscribed by clear moral imperatives and that the wealthy realize their sacred obligation to aid the less advantaged. This last point is worth developing.

Thomas Aquinas teaches that ownership of private property is to be allowed but that the usus (the use) of that privately held wealth must be directed toward the common good. This is because all of the earth and its goods belong, finally, to God and must therefore be used according to God's purpose. Pope Leo XIII made this principle uncomfortably concrete when he specified, in regard to wealth, that once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest of what one owns belongs to the poor. And in saying that, he was echoing an observation of John Chrysostom: " If you have two shirts in your closet, one belongs to you; the other belongs to the man who has no shirt."

In his wonderful Orthodoxy, written over a hundred years ago but still remarkably relevant today, G.K. Chesterton said that Catholicism is marked  through and through by the great both/and principle. Jesus is both divine and human. He is not one or the other; nor is he some bland mixture of the two; rather, he is emphatically one and emphatically the other. In a similar way, the Church is radically devoted to this world and radically devoted to the world to come. In the celibacy of its priests, it is totally against having children, and in the fruitful marriage of its lay people, it is totally for having children.

In its social teaching, this same sort of "bi-polar extremism" is on display. Solidarity? The Church is all for it. Subsidiarity? The Church couldn't be more enthusiastic about it. Not one or the other, nor some bland compromise between the two, but both, advocated with equal vigor. I think it would be wise for everyone to keep this peculiarly Catholic balance in mind as the debate over Paul Ryan's policies unfolds.

Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary. 

Hoje é dia do Patrono do Blog

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Hoje comemora-se o dia de São Maximiliano Kolbe, o homem do Bloco 11, Cela 18, que se ofereceu para morrer de fome no lugar de um pai em Auschwitz, há 71 anos (14 de agosto de 1941).

Este blog nasceu no dia que visitei a cela dele, onde João Paulo II colocou flores.

Que São Maximiliano me ajude na minha caminhada e nas caminhadas dos amigos deste pequeno blog dedicado à economia.

Vejam o relato do Rome Reports, abaixo.

August 14, 2012. (Romereports.com) August 14 is the feast day of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe. His given name was Raymond but upon entering the Franciscan seminary he changed it to Maximilian. He was born in the small Polish village of Zdunska Wola on January 8, 1894.

He is admired for the heroic gesture of offering his life to save the life of a parent. It happened on August 3, 1941 at the Auschwitz concentration camp when a prisoner escaped, ten others were sentenced to death. Seeing that one of those sentenced to die was a father, Maximilian volunteered to take his place. His request was granted and was sentenced to death by starvation. He died on August 14, 1941.

The father that was saved by Maximilian noted that he “not only died a saint, but also lived as a saint”. During his last days spent in prison, Maximilian still found a way to celebrate Mass.

In 1917 he launched the “Militia of the Immaculate,” an association of the faithful dedicated to his return to Poland. He also helped create different magazines as well as two religious communities known as “cities of the Immaculate,” one in Poland and one in Japan.

He was a saint, who as John Paul II once said, “did not suffer in death, but gave the gift of life”.

Standard Chartered e o Irã

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Hoje foi anunciado que o principal órgão regulador do mercado financeiro de Nova York acusou o banco britânico Standard Chartered de administrar de forma inidônia, de ser um "banco pária" (rogue bank). Standard Chartered é acusado de ocultar na sua contabilidade mais de US$ 250 bilhões em transações irregulares com o Irã. O Banco nega, mas caso seja verdade o envolvimento do banco com o Irã, um estado que financia o terrorismo, pode deixar no chão o relacionamento que foi descrito aqui anteriormente entre o HSBC e o terrorismo e os chefões das drogas. Além do Irã, há indícios de relacionamento criminoso entre o Standard Chartered e Líbia, Burma e Sudão.

Vejam o texto da BBC.

Standard Chartered bank 'in $250bn scheme with Iran'

The New York State Department of Financial Services said that the bank hid 60,000 secret transactions for "Iranian financial institutions" that were subject to US economic sanctions.
It labelled UK-based Standard Chartered a "rogue institution".
The bank has been threatened with having its US banking licence revoked.
The allegations are far larger than those involving HSBC, which was recently accused by the US Senate of failing to prevent money laundering from countries around the world including Mexico and Iran. It has set aside $700m to deal with any fines and penalties arising from those allegations.
The bank is ordered to appear before the regulator soon to "explain these apparent violations of law" from 2001 to 2010.
The regulator also said that it would hold a formal hearing over the "assessment of monetary penalties".
"If the allegations are proven true, it does show there was a systematic policy in place to strip these wires of the necessary information," Farhad Alavi, a lawyer at BHFA Law Group in Washington DC, told the BBC.
"Because the transactions have to pass through the US [because they are in US dollars] this is one area where the US can exert its power."

Other schemes found
 
The regulator also said it had uncovered evidence with respect to what are apparently similar schemes to conduct business with other countries under sanctions - Libya, Burma and Sudan.

"Investigation of these additional matters is ongoing," it added.

The regulator said that its nine-month probe, which involved looking through more than 30,000 pages of documents, including internal Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) emails, showed that the bank reaped "hundreds of millions of dollars in fees".
"SCB's actions left the US financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes, and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity," it said.

'Staggering cover-up'
 
The bank was also accused of falsifying SWIFT wire payment directions by stripping the message of unwanted data that showed the clients were Iranian, replacing it with false entries.
Senior management were also said to have codified their illegal procedures in formal operating manuals, including one labelled "Quality Operating Procedure Iranian Bank Processing".
"It provided step-by-step wire stripping instructions for any payment messages containing information that would identify Iranian clients," the complaint said.
In numerous emails going back as far as 1995, the bank's lawyers advised on ways to go about circumventing US sanctions.
In March 2001, Standard Chartered's legal advisor counselled that "our payment instructions [for Iranian clients] should not identify the client or the purpose of the payment".
By 2006, there were concerns raised about the bank's conduct in its New York branch.
The chief executive for the Americas sent an email to London saying the programme needs to "evaluate if its returns and strategic benefits are... still commensurate with the potential to cause very serious or even catastrophic reputational damage to the group".
But those warnings were ignored by senior management in London in what the regulator called a "staggering cover-up".
'Obvious contempt' Iran has been subject to US economic sanctions since 1979, and the laws were toughened by Executive Orders signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 over US dollar transactions with Iran.
The US-dollar transactions in question originated and terminated in European banks in the UK and the Middle East, and were cleared through its New York branch, the complaint said.

Among the violations of the law, the bank is accused of:

• falsifying business records
• failing to maintain accurate books and records
• failing to report misconduct to the regulator in a timely manner
• evading Federal sanctions

In the 27-page complaint, the New York State Department of Financial Services said that Standard Chartered showed "obvious contempt for US banking regulations" and pointed to an email reply from a bank executive director to a New York branch officer.
"Who are you [Americans] to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians," the complaint quotes the director as saying.
Standard Chartered said: "The group is conducting a review of its historical US sanctions compliance and is discussing that review with US enforcement agencies and regulators.
"The group cannot predict when this review and these discussions will be completed or what the outcome will be."
The US Treasury, which implements the sanctions, said that it "treats sanctions violations extremely seriously".

Monges que fizeram o Ocidente Rico

 

Um trabalho do Departamento de Economia da Universidade de Copenhague, discute por que alguns países ficarm ricos e outros ficaram pobres. O ponto é formação de uma ética do trabalho, com isso discute-se o trabalho de Max Weber que dizia que o espírito protestante de trabalho duro com reinvestimento dos lucros. Para os autores, na verdade o espírito protestantes foi formado antes do protesntantismo, por uma ordem católica, a Ordem dos Cistercienses.

Os autores do trabalho são Thomas Andersen, Jeanet Bentzen, Carl-Johan Dalgard e Paul Sharp e pode ser lido clicando aqui.

O site Science Nordic fez um comentário sobre o trabalho dos autores

Muito interessante.