Podcast version: West London Man (22): It is crunch time… George and Caroline had what may be their last foreign holiday in Tuscany for some time during the latter part of August until mid-September and George returned to the gathering financial storm. George is flicking through the financial press and chatting idly to a mate of his after a long day at work. Dave: What do mean you are going to phone the Archbishop of York and see if he can lend you some mining shares to short sell?  How much hav

Shortselling and the Archbishop of Canterbury by Susan Easton. From here.“Practice What You Preach.” It was a headline writer’s dream. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York (the two top prelates of the Anglican Communion) were the keynote speakers in London, last week, at the annual dinner of The Worshipful Company of International Bankers (no kidding). They had been asked to address the topic of the world’s financial crisis.The AB of York, John Sentamu, decried an “Alice In Wonderland” market

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The Church of England has been encouraged to "put its money where its message is", after revelations that its finance managers have been using similar tactics to the ones the archbishops condemned City traders for - to maximise profits on its £5 billion assets and investments. The religion and society think-tank Ekklesia explained to the BBC and other news agencies yesterday that in 2006/2007 the Church Commissioners set up a currency hedging programme, in effect short-selling sterling to guard

Politics faces an economic crunch The main British party conferences were about to sidestep the economy, but the latest bank crunch has made the topic unavoidable, says Simon Barrow. But do politicians or the churches have anything meaningful to say? The Simon Barrow Column 19 Jun 2008 Why we need a prince of Peace Why Prince William should carve out a new role for himself as peacemaker. As the recent focus on the growing death toll in Afghanistan brings into sharp relief, the best way

FINTAG COMMENT The largest US bank failure in history - and it doesn't even make it onto the front pages. Thankfully JP Morgan is there, once again, to hoover up the best bits as Washington Mutual (or WaMu to those who struggle with 5 syllables or more) goes bust. In the meantime, the mix of 2 wannabe presidents and a real president causes the USD700bn bail out fund to be put on hold. Nobody is telling us where this figure comes from and now WaMu is no more surely it should come down? Morgan S

When I read that the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were criticising "short selling", I did wonder if they might rue the day they brought up the subject. The Church of England have a very large investment portfolio, which is carefully managed.Indeed, now Ekklesia have highlighted some interesting points:Ekklesia weighed into the debate on the ethics of financial investments and stock market speculation in response to comments made by senior clerics in the wake of the recent banking crisis.Ar

It always came on when he was in the shower. As it was too dangerous to leap out of a slippery tub and switch stations for a few minutes, he tried sticking his soapy fingers in his ears and singing “LALA! LALA! LA!’ at the top of his voice. But that didn’t work either. Platitude of the Day (click the image to visit the site) Eventually, Peter Hearty, a university research assistant and life member of the National Secular Society, found himself actually listening to Thought for the Day, and t