Finance & Bien Commun / Common Good, n 6-7

Résumé :

The first international meeting "Finance and the Common Good" was held in Geneva at the end of March 2001. It was organized by the Observatoire de la Finance, with the support of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World. The aim of the gathering was to review those situations in which financial decisions contribute most clearly to harming the common good, from there to identify their most significant exacerbating factors and to explore what should be done in order to avoid the reoccurrence of such situations. This issue of the review presents work undertaken during the meeting. The challenge has consisted in extracting the core substance of over fifteen hours of debate in total, along with about forty accompanying texts prepared for the meeting. The review separates the mass of work gathered in Geneva into three parts of unequal length. The first section presents a certain number of situations in which financial phenomena have threatened the common good. The second turns to the articulations and structural arrangements which facilitate, or which could facilitate, the emergence of the common good. As for the third part, it is devoted to the behaviour of individual players and to their responsibilities. Thus, the question of the way the Other can be taken into consideration is dealt with from the perspectives of business leaders, savers and investors, and financial intermediaries.