Brooking Institution

The World Council of Churches, which claims to speak for most Orthodox Churches around the globe, has formulated a number of proposals to reform the global financial system because of its inherent “injustice.” General Secretary Samuel Kobia sees the need for new transnational financial watchdog organizations that will “qualitatively regulate the growth in massive movements in capital.”

The problem here is that Kobia fails to understand that a global economy requires an international flow of capital — along with an international flow of goods and services and, very often, labor (indeed immigrant labor). In cataloging a long list of ills flowing from the current economic crisis, and the “neoliberal economic myth” of efficient markets, Kobia neglects to mention — or fails to see — how markets work to create wealth, economic growth and jobs. These are not things created by, as he would have it, “democratizing all global finance and trade institutions” across international boundaries. Nor is economic growth created by watchdog groups or ecumenical bodies. And Kobia also fails to see that in some of the most desperate regions of the developing world, including his own native Africa, more and more people are asking only for a chance to operate in a real market economy.

Here are some of Kobia’s more extreme proposals and my parenthetical responses:

Continue reading →