The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

Forget Wall St. The Wolves of Whitehall caused the crash – and could do so again

From our UK edition

This week, Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street opened and the Office of National Statistics reported that house prices are up by 12 per cent in London and by 5 per cent across the UK as a whole. While the former represents the cocaine-fuelled greed of bankers, which many like to think caused the financial crisis in the first place, the latter represents a wider form of greed which has even more to do with the problems that have afflicted the world from 2007 onwards. The Wolf of Wall Street is no fantasy.  While the behaviour of the antihero, Jordan Belfort, has been ratcheted up for the purposes of Hollywood, the story reflects a genuine sickness at the heart of high finance: its tendency to attract, and tolerate, psychopaths.

The Spectator

Spectator letters: On the Pope, Jesus and Mandy Rice-Davies

From our UK edition

Papal blessing Sir: In his excellent article on Pope Francis (‘Pope idol’, 11 January), Luke Coppen mentions the satirical rumour that the new pontiff had abolished sin. It could never be said, however, even in a spoof, that he has abolished the Devil, whom he has named and shamed on a number of occasions. What Coppen calls ‘the cockeyed lionisation of Francis’ is surely itself a trick of the Devil: so too the ‘older son problem’ — the disgruntlement of obedient Catholics at Francis’s embrace of sinful prodigal sons and daughters. Virtue is surely its own reward, and no one who has experienced grace hankers after the fleshpots of Egypt.