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Continuities and Limits

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Professional Authority After the Global Financial Crisis

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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.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an overview of the long-standing “heated debate” over Islamic derivatives see Maurer (2001).

  2. 2.

    <http://www.ieta.org/overview>/>.

  3. 3.

    For instance EY was named as an official certifier of “climate bonds” by the Climate Bonds Standards Board, a London-based private standard setter funded in part by Bank of America, Bloomberg, and HSBC (Kidney 2015).

  4. 4.

    According to Bloomberg’s global head of sustainability, “about two dozen Bloomberg people were involved in getting SASB off the ground” (Wenzel 2014). Michael Bloomberg, the founder of this TINC, was named as chair of SASB in 2014. Bloomberg Sustainability Manager Andrew Park also served as legal counsel and secretary to the SASB Standards Council. Bloomberg Philanthropies is also a “major funder” of the SASB and Bloomberg LP is an “in-kind supporter” that back-tests information generated by the SASB (Wenzel 2014). Two further private sector-led organisations supported by leading financial services firms are the Climate Disclosure Standards Board as well as the Prince of Wales’ Accounting for Sustainability Project, for overviews of each see Hiss (2013) and Thistlethwaite (2014, 2015).

  5. 5.

    For an overview of the activities of this body see Perry and Rehman (2011: 115).

  6. 6.

    The predecessor of AAOIFI, the Financial Accounting Organization for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions, was established in 1991. <http://www.aaoifi.com/en/about-aaoifi/about-aaoifi.html>. EY also has exclusive arrangements with the AAOIFI to certify core banking systems Shari’a compliance.

  7. 7.

    <http://www.ifrs.org/Meetings/MeetingDocs/Other%20Meeting/2013/July/Minutes-AG-meeting-2-July-2013.pdf>.

  8. 8.

    <http://www.aicpa.org/interestareas/professionalethics/resources/ethicsenforcement/downloadabledocuments/2013-annual-report-of-aicpa-disciplinary-activity.pdf>

  9. 9.

    See for instance the “explicit reappraisal of the place of history and narrative in economics” noted by Samman (2014: 323–324).

  10. 10.

    As Bill Maurer (2005: 32) notes there has long been controversy over “‘self-proclaimed shari’a scholars’ […] selling themselves to financial institutions— Islamic or otherwise—as ‘experts’.” For further analysis of this “transnational Shari’a elite” see Bassens et al (2011).

  11. 11.

    <http://www.cliffordchance.com/expertise/practice_area/finance/islamic_finance/islamic_derivatives.htm>.

  12. 12.

    Ibid . See footnote 37 on sukuk.

  13. 13.

    Ibid .

  14. 14.

    <http://www.davispolk.com/practices/corporate/environmental/>.

  15. 15.

    <http://www.bakermckenzie.com/de-DE/ClimateChange/>.

  16. 16.

    <http://www.davispolk.com/practices/corporate/environmental/>.

  17. 17.

    <http://www.bakermckenzie.com/de-DE/ClimateChange/>.

  18. 18.

    <http://www.moodysanalytics.com/SPAReports>.

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  1. Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn

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Campbell-Verduyn, M. (2017). Continuities and Limits. In: Professional Authority After the Global Financial Crisis. Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52782-6_6

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