PROFESSOR ATUL K. SHAH www.atulkshah.co.uk
Globally renowned expert advisor and broadcaster on culture, accounting, finance, business ethics, holistic education and leadership
If finance science operates as a dogma, then its ecosystem can be analyzed like an organized religion—complete with churches, core beliefs, sermons, rituals, incentives, and motivations that reinforce its fundamentalist doctrines. This helps explain why finance, despite widespread evidence of fraud, inequality, corruption, and perpetual crises, remains unquestioned and deeply entrenched in global systems.
1. The Churches of Finance: Institutional Power Centers
🔹 Wall Street & Global Financial Centers – The financial Vatican where capital is worshiped, and decisions are made with divine authority.
🔹 Central Banks & IMF/World Bank – The High Priesthood, controlling monetary policy, disciplining economies, and ensuring adherence to financial orthodoxy.
🔹 Business Schools & Economic Think Tanks – Seminaries of finance that train new disciples (MBAs, CFAs, PhDs in Finance) to perpetuate the faith.
🔹 Credit Rating Agencies – The clergy of financial righteousness, issuing judgments (AAA, junk status) that dictate the financial fate of nations and corporations.
🔹 Stock Exchanges (NYSE, Nasdaq, LSE, etc.) – The temples where offerings are made, and where capitalists seek divine rewards in the form of returns.
🔹 Regulatory Agencies (SEC, FCA, etc.) – Ecclesiastical enforcers who claim to oversee fairness but often serve as gatekeepers protecting the faithful from external threats.
📌 Key Role: These institutions maintain the illusion of finance as a neutral, objective science, ensuring no heresy (alternative models of economy) gains traction.
2. The Core Beliefs: The Financial Theology
A. The Market as God
🔹 Markets are omniscient, self-correcting, and always right.
🔹 Interfering with the market is blasphemy—governments must be “disciplined” if they try to regulate too much.
📌 Reality Check: Financial crises and inequality show markets fail frequently, but this belief persists.
B. Growth is the Ultimate Good
🔹 Endless economic growth is sacred, no matter the social or environmental cost.
🔹 GDP growth is the ultimate indicator of well-being, despite mounting evidence of climate change, exploitation, and instability.
📌 Reality Check: Infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically and ecologically impossible.
C. Debt is Sacred, but Only for the Poor
🔹 Countries in the Global South must repay debts at any cost, but banks and corporations get bailed out for their reckless failures.
🔹 The debt economy enslaves people and nations, yet it is sold as “responsible financial management.”
📌 Reality Check: The financial system privatizes profits and socializes losses, proving it serves elite interests.
D. Wealth is a Sign of Virtue
🔹 If you’re rich, you deserve it; if you’re poor, you failed morally or worked too little.
🔹 This neoliberal prosperity gospel ignores structural inequalities, discrimination, and exploitation.
📌 Reality Check: Most billionaires inherit wealth or exploit loopholes, yet finance still promotes the myth of meritocracy.
3. The Sermons: Financial Propaganda & Ideology
🔹 “Free markets are the best way to organize society.”
🔹 “Government intervention is bad, except when bailing out banks.”
🔹 “We need austerity to fix national economies (but never for corporations).”
🔹 “Inequality is natural and even desirable because it creates incentives.”
🔹 “Risk-taking is good (until the financial system collapses).”
📌 Who Delivers the Sermons?
✅ Financial Media (CNBC, Bloomberg, The Economist)
✅ Neoliberal Think Tanks (Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation)
✅ Academic Economists (trained in neoclassical dogma)
📌 Purpose: These sermons keep the public misinformed, obedient, and loyal to financial capitalism, despite overwhelming evidence of its systemic failures.
4. The Rituals: Financial Practices That Reinforce the Dogma
🔹 Stock Market Worship: People check indexes daily as if they are sacred texts revealing divine truth.
🔹 Quarterly Earnings Reports: Corporate sacraments where CEOs pray to shareholders with profit figures.
🔹 MBA Induction Ceremonies: Where finance students are initiated into the cult of free-market fundamentalism.
🔹 Bailouts for the Rich, Austerity for the Poor: Governments save banks and corporations but punish citizens in crises.
🔹 Annual Davos Meetings: The Vatican Council of financial elites, reinforcing doctrine under the guise of solving global problems.
📌 Reality Check: These rituals maintain public faith in finance, even when its repeated crashes devastate economies.
5. The Incentives: Why the System Persists
🔹 Greed & Power: The elite benefit immensely from this system, so they fund institutions that promote it.
🔹 Job Security: Academics and policymakers who challenge financial orthodoxy face career suicide.
🔹 Political Capture: Governments are deeply tied to finance, ensuring policy always serves capital, not people.
🔹 Consumer Indoctrination: Society is trained to see debt as normal, inequality as inevitable, and markets as divine forces.
📌 Key Insight: This system survives because powerful actors ensure alternative models remain marginalized.
6. The Consequences of Financial Dogma
🚨 Inequality skyrockets while billionaires hoard wealth.
🚨 Crises are inevitable, but financial elites are never held accountable.
🚨 Climate change worsens, but finance refuses to abandon endless growth.
🚨 Society internalizes financial myths, blaming themselves for systemic failures.
📌 Final Thought: Finance isn’t a science—it’s a fundamentalist religion that serves power. Until we recognize this, real reform is impossible.
7. How Do We Challenge This Financial Fundamentalism?
🔹 Expose the Myths: Teach alternative economic models (cooperative finance, post-growth economics, Buddhist/Jain financial ethics).
🔹 Break the Church’s Power: Regulate banks, tax wealth, and end corporate capture of policy.
🔹 Decolonize Business Education: Remove financial dogma from universities and introduce pluralistic perspectives.
🔹 Reclaim Public Finance: Shift from private profit-driven finance to public banking, ethical investment, and community wealth-building.
🚨 Conclusion: Finance is Not Science, It’s Ideology 🚨
✅ Just like medieval churches protected feudal power, finance protects economic elites.
✅ It thrives on false assumptions, mass propaganda, and ritualistic practices.
✅ It must be challenged with alternative economic models grounded in ethics, sustainability, and human well-being.