Continuities and Limits

Abstract

This penultimate chapter exposes significant continuities and limits to the enhanced ethical emphasis in the aftermath of the 2007--8 global financial crisis. First, the explicit consideration of ethics was not paralleled by changes in expert knowledge. Second, the emphasis on macro-level moral issue-areas continued to emphasise key liberal values of individualism, economic growth, transparency, and market self-governance. These elements of continuity undermined both post-crisis defences of mammon and attempts to re-legitimate professional power. In a first instance, continual cognitive failures involved professionals in persistent scandals and volatilities. In a second instance, overtly moral niches of global finance were integrated into a volatile Anglo-American financial system marked by crises of increasing frequency and severity. The enhanced stress on overtly moral issues therefore persistently undermines rather than enhances professional authority. More widely, the enhanced ethical emphasis fails to inject new ideas and values in Anglo-American finance.