Sarkozy Calls for Moral Capitalism

According to the New York Times, at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on world leaders to embrace “a more moral form of financial capitalism.” Is he saying that regular capitalism is immoral?

The bankers and executives at the meeting say that the French president was doing nothing more than appealing to present anti-business and anti-bank populism. He’s also playing politics, they say. France does have regional elections in six weeks, and they are likely to have an impact on Sarkozy’s presidency.

What the bankers and executives were most upset about was the French president’s call for a tax on financial transactions and a call to scale back lavish bonuses. He was speaking to a tough audience on those two subjects.

I’m no fan of Sarkozy, but his speech makes one think about hard questions. Should morality have anything to do with capitalism? Should morality have anything to do with the employer-employee relationship? In those contexts, what does morality mean?

If lower echelon employees, hard-working though they may be, are making $10-$12 an hour and their CEO is making millions a year, is that immoral? I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a young colleague about the kinds of bonuses some executives pull in every year. He took offense at these bonuses. When I asked him what is the maximum amount anyone should make, he said $500,000 per year. I suspect that even Sarkozy would choke on that, though it is an amount so far removed from the vast majority of Americans and other people in the world as to be play money talk.

I’m also reminded of a post I did around Christmas. I didn’t mention morality in the post, but the parable told in the post just may have something to do with the subject.