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Letter: Smart money

Published 5 June 2013

From Roger Taylor

In his letter on corporate responsibility, Ian Hill asks: “what qualifications… do the people at the top have?” (18 May, p 29). The main one is cleverness. In the financial sector, unfortunately, it is the kind of cleverness that gives it a bad name, having been used to con the rest of us into believing that moving our money about is both profoundly important and worthy of absurd rewards.

Like astrologers, they think the future is foreseeable, and like alchemists, they search for a philosopher’s stone – ever more complex software – that will turn the leaden present into a golden future. Clever indeed to finagle us all with two dead “sciences”.

Wirral, Merseyside, UK

Issue no. 2920 published 8 June 2013

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