Archbishop of Canterbury: Greed has caused global financial crisis
The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for more “just” rates of interest as he blamed greed for the global financial crisis.
Dr Rowan Williams said Christians and Muslims should work together to decide what might constitute a fairer system of borrowing, and suggested an alternative to the current banking system.
It comes just weeks after he called for tighter regulation of the stock markets to prevent a repeat of the excesses of recent years, and claimed Karl Marx was correct to warn of the power of “unbridled capitalism” over workers.
Speaking at the end of the biggest ever conference in Britain devoted to improving understanding between the two faiths, Dr Williams acknowledged that while Islam still forbids the charging of interest, Christian leaders watered down their opposition to the practice centuries ago.
He said: “The Christian tradition has always been cautious about interest.
“For many centuries it was very much of one mind with the Islamic tradition but after the 16th century that changed.
