{"id":370,"date":"2014-05-21T16:43:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T15:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/?p=370"},"modified":"2015-04-08T16:53:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T15:53:12","slug":"who-is-picking-up-the-tab-for-the-financial-crisis-is-it-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/2014\/05\/21\/who-is-picking-up-the-tab-for-the-financial-crisis-is-it-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Picking up the Tab for the Financial Crisis? Is it Fair?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The most heavily indebted governments have always resorted to the same strategy: inflation<\/strong>. Suppose you owe 100 euros that you need to repay in one year at an interest rate of 3%. When the time comes, if inflation is 5%, you will repay 103 euros with a purchasing power of only 98 euros.<\/p>\n<p>The lender will have lost two euros. <strong>You cannot induce inflation, but your government or the central bank of your country can<\/strong>. And they will try.<\/p>\n<p><strong>If they fail to do so<\/strong>, they will implement the latest fad in monetary policy: quantitative easing and forward guidance. In other words, <strong>they buy public debt in great quantities in order to decrease the interest rate<\/strong> and they demonstrate their desire to keep interest rates low for a long period of time.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_373\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-373\" style=\"width: 390px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Euroscheine_01.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-373\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/files\/2014\/05\/800px-Euroscheine_01.jpg\" alt=\"Financial crisis.\" width=\"390\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/files\/2014\/05\/800px-Euroscheine_01.jpg 800w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/files\/2014\/05\/800px-Euroscheine_01-300x208.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/files\/2014\/05\/800px-Euroscheine_01-624x433.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 390px) 100vw, 390px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-373\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Wikipedia. Author: Huhu Uet.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>With this approach, they achieve two things: stimulate domestic demand and make borrowing more affordable<\/strong>. They will maintain this course of action <strong>until inflation increases once again<\/strong>, in other words, until they can implement the old, above-mentioned strategy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>From the point of view of consequentialism, this appears to be a good solution<\/strong>.<strong> People\u2019s savings suffer losses, but lenders come out winning <\/strong>and the country is able to quickly resolve its problems.<\/p>\n<p>There are more winners than losers, so this must be a good approach, right? Yet, <strong>from a more objective ethical standpoint, the result is not so clear<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Among the winners we find financial institutions<\/strong>, who back in the day created excess debt and who <strong>have been rescued thanks to citizens\u2019 funds<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>And <strong>among the losers\u00a0are savers like the families<\/strong> that have attempted to set money aside for their retirement.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Is it fair?<\/strong>\u00a0<a class=\"inline-twitter-link inline-tweet-click\" href=\"#\" onclick=\"inline_tweet_sharer_open_win('https:\\\/\\\/twitter.com\\\/intent\\\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.iese.edu%2Fethics%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F370%2F&text=Can+governments+and+central+banks+neglect+ethical+arguments+when+it+comes+to+manipulating+money%3F+');\" title=\"Tweet This!\">Can governments and central banks neglect ethical arguments when it comes to manipulating money? <span class=\"non-dashicons\"> <\/span><\/a>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most heavily indebted governments have always resorted to the same strategy: inflation. Suppose you owe 100 euros that you need to repay in one year at an interest rate of 3%. When the time comes, if inflation is 5%, you will repay 103 euros with a purchasing power of only 98 euros. The lender [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,7959,1450],"tags":[76093,91591,123,38824],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-ethics","category-markets","category-values","tag-central-banks","tag-ethics","tag-financial-crisis","tag-inflation","megacategoria-mc-business-ethics-and-corporate-social-responsibility"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/ethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}