Fixing The Financial System: Adam Smith Vs. Jeremy Bentham

Abstract:

The challenge for reformers who work in this broader-than-modern-economics tradition will be to face up to two tasks. First it will be necessary to identify what other-regarding obligations are important for financial-service employees to recognise, in whichever part of the financial system is being analysed. Second it will be necessary to create a greater degree of professionalism within the financial services industry, so that those who work within it actually do come to recognise these obligations, and their corresponding responsibilities, and come to act in the light of them. This will require that these employees come to frame their everyday working life in such a way that they actually do carry out these obligations. Creating this professionalism will require that detailed attention be given to governance arrangements and to other mechanisms, and that an effective accountability regime is set up which holds to account those who do not fulfil these obligations. These are big tasks – tasks on which many people are now already working.