You heard it here...over a year ago

According to the Washington Post, "[Treasury Secretary Henry M.] Paulson and [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S.] Bernanke presented a 'chilling' picture of the state of the financial system, according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity."

Over a year ago, this blog quoted Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. His words were prescient, given the current economic debacle.

"Socialism is not the only enemy of the market economy. Another enemy, all the more powerful for its recent global triumph, is the market economy itself. When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends. That, not the return of socialism, is the danger that advanced economies now face. And in these times, when markets seem to hold out the promise of uninterrupted growth in our satisfaction of desires, the voice of our great religious traditions needs to be heard, warning us of the gods that devour their own children, and of the temples that stand today as relics of civilizations that once seemed invincible.

The market, in my view, has already gone too far: not indeed as an economic system, but as a cast of thought governing relationships and the image we have of ourselves. A great rabbi once taught this lesson to a successful but unhappy businessman. He took him to the window and asked him, What do you see? The man replied, I see the world. He then took him to a mirror and asked, What do you see? He replied, I see myself. That, said the rabbi, is what happens when silver covers glass. Instead of seeing the world you see only yourself. The idea that human happiness can be exhaustively accounted for in terms of things we can buy, exchange, and replace is one of the great corrosive acids that eat away the foundations on which society rests; and by the time we have discovered this, it is already too late.

The market does not survive by market forces alone. It depends on respect for institutions, which are themselves expressions of our reverence for the human individual as the image and likeness of God."


I find it sadly ironic that at the very time the market might be open to rethinking its need to respect the institutions Rabbi Sacks names (Sabbath, marriage and family, education, property, tradition/Law/Scripture) so many Christians are advocating jettisoning the very concept of "institution." Are we missing a really important teaching moment?