A Banker Reflects on Money, Love, and Virtue

When money, love and virtue are raised in the same conversation, most people respond with surprise and scepticism. What do these concepts have in common? They belong to different realms. When they are raised by a former banker and elaborated into an approach that could transform the way we think about our world and the way we structure our organisations and society, then something truly radical is afoot. This book offers a way to bring qualitative discussion into a material area, so as to allow for construction of a world where money, love and virtue work together, not in contradiction. *** "Maria José Pereira is a former banker with considerable experience of the money markets and the changing banking culture in the Far East as well as in London and New York. She writes lucidly and with great authority about the missing connections between banking, markets, virtue, and, above all, love. She creates the case for economics as a means to reinforcing citizenship, for establishing collective responsibility, for promoting compassion, and for humans to become a 'living entity.' ...Pereira provides one of the most fulsome explanations of the causes of the banking collapse (and its continuance) this reviewer has ever read. For anyone interested in understanding why there is still a financial crisis (though muffled and partially concealed by bankers and politicians) and why the calls for both social justice and ecological restoration through the reformed social market place remain unheeded, even when issued by Nobel Laureates, Pereira's analysis is essential reading..." -- Tim O'Riordan, Environment Magazine [Economics, Business, Sociology]