Thoughts on the Financial Crisis

Last week, while in New York for work, I went to an event hosted by the Center for Faith & Work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. The speakers were Pastor Tim Keller and Julian Robertson of Tiger Management, who I hadn't heard of before but apparently is a titan in finance, one of the inventors of the hedge fund or something like that.

It was basically a mini-panel discussion and Q&A about the financial crisis and what the Christian perspective on it is. They covered all the hot topics from executive compensation to gov't regulation. A few of the highlights:

• On how long the crisis will last. Julian: "for many, many years." 'Nuff said.
• On how to get out of it. Julian again: Making our education system more competitive. He spoke of the need to re-structure education and lessen the power of teachers' unions.
  
• On the Wall Street types who've lost their jobs. Both Tim & Julian felt that too many young people had gone into finance drawn by the money & glamour, and it was probably a good thing that from now on the talent would be distributed across more industries and more cities. (Tim also gave a plug for going to work for a non-profit or school, which need ppl with finance & administration skills.)
  
• On government regulation. Both worried that the gov't was overstepping its bounds. Julian suggested we all tighten our belts and suffer through a sharper, more painful downturn without gov't spending or "more leveraging" to speed up the recovery. Tim, in typically balanced fashion, talked about the role of the family, the church or social institution, the gov't, and private enterprise, and how each of those had its role to play. He also warned of trusting either gov't OR business too much, since both are made up of people and therefore are corruptible. He also brought up the very interesting example of Deut. 24:6, "Do not take a pair of millstones—not even the upper one—as security for a debt, because that would be taking a man's livelihood as security," as an example of the kind of gov't regulation that IS needed to prevent a lender from driving a borrower into financial ruin.
  
• On the bailouts. Julian pretty much affirmed that the bailout of AIG and other "too big to fail" institutions may have been necessary. Tim observed that bailouts are better than slavery! (Slavery, or indentured servitude, was how people worked off their debts in the ancient Middle East, hence its mentions in the Bible.)
  
• On what the Bible has to say about debt and over-leveraging. Tim said basically all the major religions are extremely cautious or negative on money-lending & indebtedness, and recommend paying down your debt and living within your means.
• On how to get through the financial crisis. Both Tim & Julian affirmed that family & friends are what's really important at the end of the day, not career or income. Tim observed that in all his years as a minister, having visited many deathbeds, no one had ever told him, "I wish I spent more time at the office."
  

I dug this postcard for the event.