I'm extremely honored to be with you today
and was pleased to receive your invitation.
The Church's social teaching,
stretching back to the first modern encyclical
about the industrial economy, Rerum Novarum in 1891,
to Centesimus Annus, to Pope Francis’ inspiring encyclical
Laudato Si’ this past year,
have grappled with the challenges of the market economy.
There are few places in modern thought that rival the depth and insight
of the Church’s moral teachings on the market economy.
Over a century ago,
Pope Leo XIII highlighted economic issues and challenges
in Rerum Novarum that continue to haunt us today,
such as what he called, and I quote,
“the enormous wealth of a few
as opposed to the poverty of the many." End quote.
And let us be clear.
That situation is worse today.
In the year 2016,
the top one percent of the people on this planet,
the wealthiest one percent,
own more wealth than the bottom 99 percent,
while the wealthiest 85 people
own more than the bottom half.
Three and a half billion people.
At a time when so few have so much,
and so many have so little,
we must reject the foundations
of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.
The words of Centesimus Annus likewise resonate with us today.
One striking example:
Quote, "Furthermore, society and the State
must ensure wage levels
adequate for the maintenance of the worker and his family,
including a certain amount for savings.
This requires a continuous effort
to improve workers’ training and capability
so that their work will be more skilled and productive,
as well as careful controls and adequate legislative measures
to block shameful forms of exploitation,
especially to the disadvantage of the most vulnerable workers,
of immigrants and of those on the margins of society.
The role of trade unions in negotiating minimum salaries
and working conditions is decisive in this area." That's paragraph fifteen.
Paragraph 43. The essential wisdom of Centesimus Annus is this:
"A market economy is beneficial for productivity and economic freedom.
But if we let the quest for profits dominate society,
if workers become disposable cogs of the financial system,
if vast inequalities of power and wealth
lead to marginalization of the poor and the powerless,
then the common good is squandered
and the market economy fails us."
Pope John Paul II puts it this way.
Profit that is the result of “illicit exploitation,
speculation, or the breaking of solidarity among working people . . .
has not justification,
and represents an abuse in the sight of God and man.”
We are now twenty-five years after the fall of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.
Yet we have got to acknowledge that Pope John's,
John Paul’s warnings about the excesses of untrammeled finance
were deeply prescient.
Twenty-five years after Centesimus Annus,
speculation, illicit financial flows,
environmental destruction,
and the weakening of the rights of workers
is far more severe today than it was a quarter century ago.
Financial excesses,
indeed widespread financial criminality on Wall Street,
played a direct role in causing the world’s worst financial crisis
since the Great Depression.
We need a political analysis as well as a moral
and anthropological analysis
to understand what has happened since 1991.
We can say that with unregulated globalization,
a world market economy built on speculative finance
burst through the legal, political, and moral constraints
that had once served to protect the common good.
In my country, home of the world’s largest financial markets,
globalization was used as a pretext to deregulate the banks,
ending decades of legal protections for working people and small businesses.
Politicians joined hands with the leading bankers
to allow the banks to become, quote unquote, “too big to fail.”
The result: eight years ago the American economy and much of the world
was plunged into the worst economic decline since the 1930s.
Untold numbers of working people
lost their jobs, their homes and their life savings,
and the government bailed out the banks.
Inexplicably, the U.S. political system
doubled down on this reckless financial deregulation,
when our Supreme Court in a series of deeply misguided decisions,
unleashed an unprecedented flow of money into American politics.
These decisions culminated in the infamous Citizens United case,
which opened the financial spigots for huge campaign contributions
by billionaires and large corporations to turn
the United States political system to their narrow and greedy advantage.
It has established a system in which billionaires today
can buy elections.
Rather than an economy aimed at the common good,
we have been left with an economy operated for the top one percent,
who get wealthier and wealthier
as the working class, the young and the poor
fall further and further behind.
And the billionaires and banks have reaped the returns
of their campaign investments, in the form of special tax privileges,
imbalanced trade agreements that favor investors over workers,
and that even give multinational companies extra-judicial power
over governments that are trying to regulate them.
But as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have warned us
and the world, the consequences have been even more dire
than the disastrous effects of financial bubbles
and falling living standards of working-class families.
Our very soul, our very soul as a nation
has suffered as the public has lost faith in political and social institutions.
As Pope Francis has stated, and I quote,
profoundly stated, “Man is not in charge today,
money is in charge, money rules.” End of quote.
And the Pope has also stated, and I quote,
very profoundly, “We have created new idols.
The worship of the golden calf of old
has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money
and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless
and lacking any truly humane goal.” End of quote.
And further, from the Pope. “While the income of a minority
is increasingly, is increasing exponentially,
that of the majority is crumbling.
This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy
of markets and financial speculation,
and thus deny the right of control to States,
which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.” End quote.
Pope Francis has called on the world to say, and I quote,
and how profound, how important this is,
“No to a financial system that rules rather than serves”.
And he called upon financial executives and political leaders
to pursue financial reform that is informed by ethical considerations.
He stated plainly and powerfully that the role of wealth and resources
in a moral economy must be that of servant, not master.
The widening gap between the rich and the poor,
the desperation of the marginalized,
the power of corporations over politics,
is not a phenomenon of the United States alone.
The excesses of the unregulated global economy
have caused even more damage in the developing countries.
They suffer not only from the boom-bust cycles on Wall Street,
but from a world economy that puts profits over pollution,
oil companies over climate safety,
and arms trade over peace.
And as an increasing share of new wealth and income
goes to a small fraction of those at the top,
fixing this gross inequality has become a central challenge.
The issue of wealth and income inequality
is the great economic issue of our time,
it is the great political issue of our time,
it is the great moral issue of our time,
it is an issue that we must confront in the United States and across the world.
Pope Francis has given the most powerful name
to the predicament of modern society,
he calls it the Globalization of Indifference.
Quote, “Almost without being aware of it,” he noted,
“we end up being incapable of feeling compassion
at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain,
and feeling a need to help them, as though all of this
were someone else’s responsibility and not our own.” End quote.
We have seen on Wall Street that financial fraud
became not only the norm in many ways, but the new business model,
business as usual. Top bankers, major executives
of Wall Street firms, have shown no shame,
no shame at all, for their bad behavior,
for their illegal behavior, they have made no apologies to the public.
The billions and billions of dollars of fines they have paid
for financial fraud are just another cost of doing business,
another short cut to unjust profits.
Some might feel that it is hopeless
to fight the economic juggernaut,
that once the market economy
escaped the boundaries of morality
it would be impossible to bring the economy
back under the dictates of morality and the common good.
I am told time and time again by the wealthy and the powerful,
and the mainstream media that so often represents their interests,
that we should be "practical,” that we should accept the status quo,
that a truly moral economy is beyond our reach.
Yet Pope Francis himself is surely the world’s greatest demonstration
against such a surrender to despair and cynicism.
He has opened the eyes of the world once again
to the claims of mercy, justice and the possibilities of a better world.
He is inspiring the world to find a new global consensus
for our common home.
I see that hope everyday
and that sense of possibility among America’s young people,
which gives me an enormous sense of optimism.
Our youth are no longer satisfied with corrupt and broken politics
and an economy of stark inequality and injustice.
They are not satisfied with the destruction of our environment
by a fossil fuel industry whose greed has put short term profits
ahead of climate change and the future of our planet.
They want, our young people want to live
in harmony with nature, as part of nature, not destroy nature.
They are calling out for a return to fairness,
for an economy that defends the common good
by ensuring that every person, rich or poor,
has access to quality health care, nutrition and education.
As Pope Francis made powerfully clear last year in Laudato Si’,
we have the technology and we have the know-how to solve our problems
from poverty to climate change to health care to the protection of biodiversity.
We also have the vast wealth to do so,
especially if the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes
rather than hiding their funds in the world’s tax and secrecy havens
as the Panama Papers have shown us.
The challenges facing our planet
are not mainly technological or even financial,
because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments
in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how
to meet our needs and protect the planet.
Our challenge is mostly a moral one,
to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.
Centesimus Annus, which we celebrate and reflect on today,
and Laudato Si’, are powerful, eloquent and hopeful messages
of this possibility. It is up to us to learn from them,
and to move boldly toward the common good in our time.
Thank you very much.
[Applause]