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a Editorial

Greed...

"There is something I do not understand," a friend said to me the other day. "All these
financial losses, banks going banlmipt... The money lost must have gone somewhere? It
cannot simply have disappeared into thin air!"

At the time of w't'ng, our civilized world seems to be heading towards one of the biggest financial crises in its history, and
nobody knows yet what the consequences will be in terms of unemployment, inflation, lost savings ...

When you examine the very broad picture of why it happened, it all boils down to one single word: "greed" - the third of the
seven deadly sins-to wbich one can add "more greed", expressed through speculation and lack of appropriate rules and
regulations-as a colleague explained to me.

In the filn'i Wan Sh'eet (1987), Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas), addresses a meeting of stockholders w'th the
follow'ng words: "The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed-for lack of a better word-is good. Greed is right, greed
works. Greed clarifies, cuts tbrough, and captiires the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forins; greed for life,
for money, for love, for lmowledge, has marked the ripward surge of mankind."

Greed is common huinan behaviour: the more you get, the more you want. But is it really "good"? In my own countty, there is
an on-going conflict between a fomer Nobel Prize Laureate and a telecom company. In the 1990s, the person in question
needed funding to setup atelecomcompany offeiing "cheap telephone calls forthepoor". He found a companythatwas willing
to come up with the fiinding. The two parties thus started a joint project, and the deal was that the organization would possess
35% and the remaining 65% would be in Norwegian hands. Everything went well until the person who had had the idea was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The first thing the Nobel Laiu'eate did was to start a lobbying campaign in order to obtain complete ownership of the (jointly
owned) company. He even asked the Noiwegian Governtnent to buy the shares for him and to give them to his organization -
- sometg they refused at once How could the govemment justify buying the shares of a private company with the
taxpayer's money... and then giving them away? Besides, the NorwegianNobel Committee is a private foundation that awards
its prize each year, and is quite independent of the Norwegian State. However, the Nobel Laureate did not give up and he still
wants these shares. Lately, he changed is tactics and accused the Norwegian telephone company of using child labour. Does
greed have any restraint? One can only wonder.

"'n'iis crisis is a once-in-a-lifetime experience," an econotnics professor told the press recently. Although it might happen once
in a lifetime, he did not explain why it was happening now and why innocent persons should be paying for the wishtul
thinking of those who are to blame.

Each time disaster st'kes, it's the ordinary people who end up pay'ng the price. They are the ones who are facing higher
interest rates, higher taxation and losing their jobs...

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," are the fainous words by the Spanish/American
philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist George Santayana. When you ignore istory, you pay the price...
So one can only ask why nobody sounded the alami before it was too late or, if it was sounded, why wasn't it listened to? I am
stire that one day all will be revealed. Let us hope that we do not have to go through an ordeal like the Second World War
before we find the answer.

Mazit.