Paternal fraud had therefore changed meaning

The games are made. Nothing does more for Goldman Sachs. "Morally bankrupt", according to Gordon Brown, client mistaken according to the Financial Service Authority, questionable emails disseminated these past few days Even if the Bank has strong kidney and a line of defence to the point, even if it displays the time of record profits, the wind has already turned. That the judicial machine condemned or not, whether or not political hands pulling the, the reputation of the institution is corroded, and the effects will not thin. Confidence and, therefore, the cases will be feel. Make public the shadow strategies, remember that impunity is never guaranteed, it will, necessarily, a significant impact.

Will go up to produce une new philosophy Not impossible, because there are precedents. It would do well to remember, in effect, that twenty-five centuries ago a history of banking fraud has already led to unexpected mutations. Sinope, a distant colony of Miletus established on the Black Sea now North of the Turkey, a banker had undertaken to falsify the currency. Old joke not with money, the man was sentenced to death. He made his escape and joined Athens. There, his son, who had perhaps lent support in his fraud, turns to the philosophical life. He chose the tougher and more radical way that the Greeks have invented and made even more radical: live according to the nature, harden his body, refuse the conventions and laws, the social hypocrisy and alienating comforts. This son was called Diogenes - that of the barrel, the man asked Emperor Alexander out of the Sun. And which proclaimed work, in turn, "falsifying money".

For him, this meant disturb the established beliefs, pushing the conventions, subvert the customs, convert all circulating between men as shared values and social norms. Paternal fraud had therefore changed meaning. Transposed in a symbolic register, she became the positive index of a mutation of the values: the civilized rules were that a series of errors, real life was on the other hand, only nature was the real custom currency (the Greek word "nomisma" had both directions). What report with what we have under the eyes

It would be vain to imagine that the descendants of Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, are radical philosophers or protest vagrants. Rapprochement with the ancient history of Diogenes allows a less simple conclusion. Ironically, between banker evader and protester radical is a deep relationship. Of course, one seems to embody the defect, the other virtue. In fact, should consider rather them to mirror one another. Mine nothing, they will meet and echo without knowing it. Thousand leagues between them, but their approaches are parallel. They distort and malfunction.

One rigs financial tactics, the other false moral strategies. Obviously different registers, both cheat with the common currency, are plans ingenious to work around the basic rules of the collective life. Ultimately, one as the other refuse to play the game of civilized life. Their game of mirrors thus led to the first surprise: the most sophisticated finance operations and seemingly the most subversive thinking approaches, there is more than a mere resemblance, a similar approach.

However, if you think about the criminal sanctions, the surprise is the skewness. The fraudulent banker was condemned to death, as also was Socrates, who however never claimed overthrow the established order. Diogenes of Sinope, him, the "Socrates gone insane" (Plato), ceased to seduce and to emulate. Cheats who fared best, these are the irresponsible rebels!