The Ethics of Banking:
Conclusions from the Financial Crisis
by Peter Koslowski
(Author)
The Ethics of Banking
analyzes the systemic and the ethical mistakes that led to the crisis. It keeps
the middle ground between excusing all failures by the argument of a systemic
crisis not to be taken responsibility for by the financial managers and the
moralistic reproach that only moral failure is at the origin of the crisis. It
investigates the role of speculation in the formation of the crisis and
distinguishes between productive speculation for hedging and for securing
market liquidity on the one hand, and unproductive and even detrimental
hyper-speculation going far beyond of the degree of speculation that is
necessary in a developed economy for the liquidity of financial markets, on the
other hand. Hyper-speculation has increased the risks of the financial system
and is still doing so.
