Governor is casting pearls before swine

When the Governor of the Bank of England calls on financiers to curb their avariciousness in the public interest, he presumably means that they should think of the good of the capitalist system generally, rather than their individual bank balances.

But surely we have been taught to believe that the whole dynamic of the capitalist system has to be private greed ­ - every man for himself, or, if not himself, then his shareholders. To tell a capitalist not to be avaricious is like telling a soldier not to be warlike.

Perhaps Mervyn King was simply saying that a temporary period of restraint would make for higher long-term profits. But this in turn would be merely an appeal to practice sophisticated rather than primitive self-interest, which most financiers are quite capable of doing without urging from the Governor.

Could it just conceivably be, however, that the Governor was actually making a non-economic point: that it was the financiers' patriotic duty to curb their selfishness; to grit their teeth and think of England? Not likely because most of the financiers in today's City of London are foreigners.

Then was he thinking of the good of humanity in general, or of good rather than bad behaviour; morality or even Christian morality? Again a difficulty arises. Few financiers are practising Christians or indeed practitioners of any religion.

Nowadays, once we try to think beyond the bottom line, we find ourselves at sea without a compass, since the Catholic idea of a just price and the traditional English gentlemanly prejudice against obsessive money-making no longer begin to apply.