I want to make two things clear in my contribution. The first is, that dealing with those issues is fully in line with several processes which already were started and statements delivered by the churches of the oecumene. And here I think not only of the decision of the General Council of 1997 of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in Debreczen to call for a process of education and confession in all churches about the growing social injustice and environmental destruction in our time, but also of the clear statement of the 1998 General Assembly of Harare that the challenge of globalisation ' should become a central emphasis of the work of the WCC', and that ' christians and churches should reflect on the challenge of globalization from a faith perspective'. And I add to this also the remarkable statement of Pope John Paul the Second when he announced the great Jubilee of the year 2000 and said, that there should be no longer any delay of the moment that poor Lazarus may sit at the table with the rich of this world to take part in the same meal (Incarnationis Mysterium,par 12) , as he critisized earlier in his great encyclic Sollicitudo rei Socialis of 1988 all forms of blind subjugation to the laws of increasing consumption and the structures of sin which uphold this (par 27, 31,35) . But next to that there is a second point which I want to make very clear. It is that recent developments have also deepened the need for a direct involvement of the churches as far as especially financial matters are concerned. And that as well on economic as on theological grounds.

May be the best starting point for the explanation of this last strong statement is to go back one year ago. In autumn 1999 in Bangkok, Thailand,an important joint conference was held by the WCC,the WARC and the Church of Christ in Thailand on the effects of financial globalisation in general, and of the so called- Asia crisis in particular. We listened there to the cries of people who suffered deeply under the consequences of that crisis, which is narrowly related to the extreme high volatility of short-term capital flows around the world. For international money, global capital can enter your economy in huge amounts but also leaving overnight ,for instance at the first rumours of a possible change of the exchange rate. This capital never served the poor communies in a direct way , because it usually stays in the so-called modern export- sector.But it nevertheless hurts the poor deeply when it leaves the country , as well in terms of growing unemployment, sharply rising costs of living as in awful austerity programs .The Asian crisis is surely not ended in human terms , it continues till this very day. But this bad story also leads to a puzzling question for us here today . Where is now all this money staying, where did it go when it left countries like Thailand ?

Just two months ago, the Economic Policy Review of the US. Federal Reserve Bank published a special issue on the Lessons from recent crisis in Asian Markets (september 2000) , in which we find an initial answer to that question. The capital outflows went first to offshore banks, and reached via them finally Europe and the United states. Even to such an extent, that it more than compensated the drawback of the lesser US exports to Asia. A net positive overall impact on the GDP of the US occurred, also because the incoming capital lowered there the interest rates.

Here we receive already a first indication of unjust global relationships which are caused by the fully unrestricted movements of so-called global capital. Obviously we live in a time and in a world, where finance, where the virtual world of money and capital, not only deeply influences all real economies, but also can bring down the one and boost the other. But by what criteria?

In our economic textbooks we still find the pictures of the so called financial pyramid. The lowest layer is related to the volume of quantities of goods and services which are produced in an economy. Then comes the smaller layer of the volume of cash -and creditmoney which is needed to finance these real flows, and at the top we find the trustworthy monetary reserves of especially the central banks. But if we look the international monetary scene that firm and stable pyramid is now completely reversed. For in the last 20 years, the volume of real world trade, so the first layer , has declined as percentage of the total volume of international transactions from 28,5 % till less than 1% now (UNCTAD -data) which implies that no less than 99% of all international valuta-transactions now have a direct financial character. The second layer has thus become far bigger than the first, and has a higly speculative character, while the reserve-positions at the top are in all calculations far too low to channel all these speculative funds in any desirable direction. These financial flows have thus taken the driver's seat, and recognize no other lord or master than the mass of their own subjective expectations. Expectations about what the real markets will do, but even more primarily what the financial markets themselves will do. We have indeed now clearly entered into a topside down economic world, in which the virtual worl of finance has taken the economic reality by the hand, for it decides in terms of expected rentability and expected interest-levels which economy is allowed to grow.

The movemement of global capital is therefore feared by most national governments. It is as if for them a kind of big brother came to the scene, judging all nations in terms of the highest possible financial reward on capital. But let us not forget that this new financial power has on its turn no more ground or depth than what is guessed , what is expected or estimated by the capital-investing or speculating majority . The money which leads us to the future has so to say lost all forms of anchorage within a given or objective economic reality . And therefore delivers the entire world-economy to the inherent lability op a top-down pyramid.

But let us have a closer look to the distributive aspect of global finance. I just told you, that the capital which left countries like Thailand ,Korea and Indonesia went during the Asia-crisis to Europe and especially to the US of America, and the same holds in fact for the capital flowing out of Latin America . Is that a systemic feature , or just an unhappy incident? The first ,not the last is true, and that can be proven . Concrete facts compel us namely to distinguish between at least two different financial loopings which are clearly emerging in the present world-economy. Let us look to the following picture which tries to illustrate this.

The first looping has the 'M' of money-creation at the top, and then goes via the role of expectations at the right side to the bottom where new scarcities are produced. Then the looping turns back upward till it leads to the creation of more international liquidities. The looping is an illustration of the present dynamics of enrichment by the already rich countries, and it is drawn in the form of an ellips, because it has indeed two focusses (foci, brennpunkte). The first focus is the already discussed expansion of the Western financial markets , also in the form of deratives, with takes place with a corresponding high level of liquidity creation in key-currencies, mainly dollars. The second focus is the building up of the so called new economy in our time. These two phenomena seem to be independent, but are in fact narrowly related, with rising expectations as the main connecting element.

The building-up of the so-called new economy is namely the second extremely dynamic economic phaenomenon of our time. It stands for, as you know, the perspective of an enduring high economic growth with almost no inflation, made possible by several breakthroughs in information and communication-technology. For these breakthroughs have now made it technically possible to enter direct into house and bedrooms of the potential rich consumers of the future (the so called e-commerce) , and that in the context of a ongoing diminuation of the costs of additional information. Which has lead already now to a battle between the giants in the field of communcation on the possesion of future channels , combined with zero-pricing for the consumers . For the consumers are the ones which in the jargon of the new economy have to be 'locked-in' ,must be bound to the future software of the server and and to all his future commercial activities. In the West the average value of you as a potential future consumer is for the information-sector now estimated to be about 2000 $ per head, which stands for the net profits to be gained from consumer- markets which for the most part still have to be created! For in the new economy the base of growth is no longer existing real scarcity.It is the artificual creation or production of new scarcities.

And that makes indeed that the looping works. For that enormous, may be over-estimated potential of economic growth does not only need capital, but is also highly attractive from a financial or speculative point of view . And so we see how now indeed the growing financial markets of the West could come in as a seperate impulse, markets in which even the expectations themselves have got a money value (think of the trade in options and other deratives) . New money is continually created by the credit- circuit of the rich countries ,especially by the Euro $ market, in the expectation of this kind of future economic growth .Which money together with the repatriating global capital from elsewhere pushes the real economies of the West upward; in any case so long as the expectations hold. And so the looping completes itself. For a financial rewarding new economy motivates the financial circuit on its turn to an even stronger further expansion of the supply of key-currencies. The enrichment of the already rich seems thus to be the inner logic of this 'new finance- new economy' looping.

But let us now look also for a short moment to that other looping . It is like a kind of mirror of the first looping, and arises now in the midst of the poorest and most indebted countries. Three forms of exclusion stand namely at its base. The first is the exclusion from any kind of direct participation in the process of creation of international liquidities (the first horizontal line) The West with its key-currencies holds the monopoly of that creation, so that every country of the South , to obtain these liquidities, has either to increase its exports or to borrow from the West . But next to that comes a second form of exclusion : the lack of sufficient foreign capital for permanent direct investments (the second horizontal line) A maximum of only about one -tenth of the flows of direct investments in the world goes acording to UN statistics in the direction of the so-called developing countries, nine-tenth just prefers to stay in the West . And added to these two already existing forms of exclusion has now come a third new one. It is the exclusion which is built on the creation of new forms of scarcity ,even in the midst of the poorest countries, and which absorbs there a subtantial part of the resources which are needed to satisfy already existing needs. The newly created scarcities of the new economy so to say crowd out , take the place of the old scarcities, those which are still related to the fulfillment of basic needs . And this last type of exclusion closes in fact the the second looping. For what can you do, what should you do in a time of crisis if global capital turns its face away from you? You fall in the debt squeeze (see the top) for you cannot create more international liquidities by yourself. So the only real chance which left open for you is to re-orient your economy to more exports, instead to a further development of your own home-market. But so new scarcities (see the bottom) come in and rule before the old scarcities are fulfilled. Which implies that almost no investor will see any hope in the further development of your home-markets. The expectations there will stay utmost low and so drive your economy further in the trap of a growing financial dependency .

So we see that in this time the powers of global finance lead to the emergence of a distinct own looping of further impoverishment among the poorest nations, which arises simultaneously with the looping of a further enrichment of the rich. And because the two loopings are intrinsically related, the hard but factual unavoidable conclusion has to be ,that the present expectation-oriented economy of global finance bears some real parasitic traits. It owes its own expansion at least partially by the fact that it absorbs the life-blood of poorer indebted economies . For these economies are made increasingly serviceable to the virtual ,artifically enhanced ,and may be deadly growth of the already rich economies.

In this interim conclusion already something comes clear of the urgency for the churches to step directly into the debate about the role of global finance. Not because churches can pretend to have a similar knowledge of the technicalities of global finance as for instance the monetary authorities. But simply because here justice itself is fully at stake . For a kind of contra-oecumene is now developing in the real world, in which the rich are over-filled with even what they do not need, while the poor are sent away empty ;a kind of counter-song of Mary's hymn. And next to that there is also the clear threat of an unstoppable further erosion of nature and disastrous forms of climate change . For this tumultuous course of a further enrichment of the already rich leads inevitably to far higher degrees of material economic growth, energy- use and emissions of greenhouse-gasses than the earth can possibly endure. In the so-called GEO—2000 report of the UNEP we find for instance the statement, that from the perspective of a fulfillment of the basic needs of a growing world population , the use of energy and other resources for consumption in the West has to diminish in the coming forty years to one-tenth of the present level, a reduction with a so-called factor ten, just to stay worldwide within acceptable environmental restraints. But even with the best possible technical devices it will be impossible to reach that goal if these two loopings continue to exist. So the financial markets do simply mislead us. They have an inbuilt tendency to lead this earth, this blue planet, to the abyss and to push it even over the border of its creational capacities.

But from a theological point of view there is even more to be discussed. It is the changing role of money and finance. The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper wrote already a century ago , that christians usually forget that money forms no instrinsic part of God';s creation, and therefore entirely overlook that before money can be used equally for good or bad purposes that it has to be neutralised. For as soon as money is not securely anchored but left to itself it indeed begins to accumulate and to construct a world according to its own acquisitive order. Karl Marx is not often quoted in our time, but of course he was correct in stating, that a GWG cyclus (money- goods- money ) is really different from a WGW cyclus (goods- money- goods), because it so to say monetizes the real world.

Let me try to be more precise. We have just seen, that in the domain of international money no less than three important changes are taking place . In the first place there is the change from the real to the virtual domain - money has increasingly an anonymous and unseen presence. Secondly there is a change away from any kind of anchoring in the outside world to freely and autonomous floating . And in the third place there is that strange march into the realm of subjective expectations , in ' what is expected to be' is continally transformed into 'what has to be' . So international money is lesser than ever before a facilitating tool, it has so to say liberated itself in the global arena from almost all restricting chains or serviveable duties . But what happens if money itself becomes autonomous? It stops to be a servant and becomes a master . Master that indeed is not said too much. I remind you of what Dr Tietmayerof the German Federal Bank said about two years ago, that now finally the politicians had been brought under the control of the financial markets. And I mention here as well the recent serious concerns of prof Witteveen, former executive director of the IMF, about the present path of financial globalisation, because it leads in his view to what he calls an erosion of the national tax- sovereignty . For several governments feel themselves now obliged to make their tax-regimes more favourable to investors and high-income earners , and to bring down the levies on energy and the use of the environment, just in concern for the possible loss of foreign capital. There is indeed a new fear creeping all over the world: how to survive if global capital withdraws itself from your economy?- as if a new big brother is watching and judging you..So that states have begun to fight and compete with each other, just to remain acceptable 'in the eyes' of global finance.

But that is not innocent, not spiritually neutral, also not from a theological point of view. For if elements of real fear enter the global scene for something which from itself nothing more than a thing or even a virtual phenomenon , and nevertheless is seen as treated as having life in itself, than this are relativily secure signs that one of another kind of idolatry crept in. For in the classical sense of the word an idol is something taken from the existing reality elevated and set it on its own feet, and then seen as endowed with an internal will and spirit. It could also explain why there exists in our time such a strange kind of unhealthy reverence for what the financial markets can do and will do, while also the language which is used, not at least by international agents ,is increasingly the language of obedience and full of pseudo-moral overtones.

But why do I suggest this possiblity, does it help us in our analysls and our possible choices? I think so. For even not the slightest form of idolatry can exist without any form of influencing and especially narrowing the human mind. The future is shrinking, and also the surrounding reality becomes less clear, more vague. Is it possible that these forms of collective hypnosis are indeed now also working in Western society? If that is true, then it has indeed also for the position of the church and of theology wide implications. For then their place or contribution should go far beyond preaching or dreaming about possible idealistic alternatives. Then thheir place is and should be not at the side of an open and sometimes even painful realism. For where the human mind is becoming a narrow mind, then the church is primarily called to throw the windows open, to learn people to look to the world, the oecumene, as it really is, and to unmask the idols by confronting them with the experiences of the excluded , the eliminated, the neglected . In a time of increasing blindness we need foremost in our chuches a deeply founded biblical realism, which looks with open eyes to what is threatened and at the rim of being easily sacrificed .

But it was a similar awareness , which brought the WARC -council of 1997 in Debreczen to asked all churches into a continued process of education and confession in view of increasing social unjustice and environmental degradation. And was it not the WCC assembly of Harare, which not only noticed with deep concern the evil and the unjust tendencies in the present process of globalisation, but also declared that by remaining silent the very essence of the church, its very being, would be denied? Elements which have also been continually present in the testimony of the Church of Rome, and in the last years have been further elaborated by several meetings and actions of Kairos and in the context of the Jubilee- campaign.

But today there are even further arguments to stress the urgency of this position- choice . And here I do not only think of the obsession in our time ,especially among politicians , with the necessity of a more rapid expansion of production and trade per se, while the preservation of the stocks of human, of social and environmental capital is almost entirely neglected. I also think of what now happens at the level of mental processses during the building up of the so called new economy. For in the mind of the average consumer now new scarcities , new demands are produced and planned without any prior legitimation from their side; even research is now taking place how to make children more receptive for commercial impulses. Consumer demand is now incresingly steered and manipulated just to reach a higher degree of economic expansion and profitability of financial capital, it is so to say internalised in the economy. So we meet here even a conscious and well- organized process of narrowing the horizon of the consumer. For in his mind a virtual world of harmless joyful expansion is created, filled with endless flows of consumption , while the real word is a world of further impoverishment and an increasing environmental vulnerability . A new piper of Hamelen is active to whistle people to the abyss.

I already referred before to the quest of the Council of Debreczen to the churches to be open to the possibility of a renewed articulation of our christian faith vis-a vis the econonomism and mammonism of our time. And indeed , money should never be our guide , lord or fuehrer in the future. But I want to add here and now, also on theological grounds, that a hypocritical confession is worse than any confession at all. In these days of giving in to the whims of global capital and listening to the flute-tones of endless more consumption first the churches of the North and their members have to come to their senses. For if in practice they are not willing to say 'no' to these kind of seductions , then also the kairos of this time is simply not understood. A living church which stands at the side of ecumenical realism has to show in our time at least some forms of cultural disobedience. It should be recognizable as a community of sharing and saturation , which opposes also in its lifestyle any financial commercial drive to overburden the earth and to absorb the life blood of poorer nations .

But is this not far away from any chance of realisation? That depends in my view from three things. It depends firstly from the willigness to see and listen , and that is in my view growing now in several churches It depends secondly as well from the will and the possibilities to form real alliances with the poor, because they still form the majority of the world population. But what perhaps is most needed and may be even decisive ,is the necessary relationship with as well joy as sincere hope.

Perhaps these words strike you here as a misfit, but I use them on purpose. For choosing the side of realism versus the blindness and the illusions of so many financial and economic processes of our day has at least one very hopeful and even joyfyul side. It is that also the future becomes open again, liberated from the closed TINA view, the view that There Is or that there are No alternatives .Especially the motive of Jubilee is and remains here extremely inspiring, and can really function like a gate of hope , or, if you prefer that, like a powerful ice-breaker.

The motive of Jubilee , as it is used so far, begins with the claim of the cancellation of the debts of the poor, and correctly so .For escaping from the debt squeeze is no less than breaking through the deadly closed logic of further impoverishment , so that poor economies can reorient themselves to the further development of their home markets may occur. It breaks through the dynamics of specifically the second looping, and in combination with the Tobin tax could even begin to undermine the financial powers which now determine the one-sided direction of the first looping . But the theological perspective of the Jubilee- motive reaches further. It reaches in my view even the core-issue of the necessary restructuration of the world of finance itself.

Jubilee is in the Biblical texts namely more than an effort to come to debt-reduction of debt-relief. One could even say, that debt cancellation belongs in the Scriptures more to the institution of the Sabbathical year , where the legal possibilties stop to enforce the repayment of loans, than to the year of Jubilee,

which ,after seven times seven years even goes back to the economic reasons why debts occur and are reeatedly growing. For in that year,so we read, the land as main factor of production is returned to its original owners, it goes back to the impoverished families themselves. Jubilee, therefore , inspires us to think and act also in terms of the distribution of the economic seeds of wealth , and not to restrict ourselves to a better distribution of its possible fruits. The motive of Jubilee corresponds therefore in our time with every effort to give or return to the poor the direct access to capital as source of wealth.It is therefore the monopoly of the rich countries to create international money which has to be broken. For it is that absurd monopoly of privilege, that that has erected the idol of global capital in our midst, and which is of all closed financial circuits the real organising principle.

But is this also attainable in practice? Yes, it is, and especially so In view of the growing instability of the world's monetary system. The re-anchoring of the far too wild creation of international liquididities has namely already now become unavoidable, it is even a matter of high urgency. For the dikes of the world's monetary system are at the point of breaking under the power of the continuous sea-rollers of global capital . But what is a better and surer foundation for the production of international money than to relate it at least for a substantial part to the absorptive capacity of the poorest countries of this earth, so to the additional buying power which they really yearly need to cancel their debts and to build up step by step the production and consumption of their own basic commodities ? Of course it has far reaching economic and political consequences to take that road. It would for instance imply a change in the IMF rules of distribution of special drawing rights, and next to that, just to prevent world inflation, a proportional diminuation of the creation of key-currencies by the richest countries . But is that not exactly what we need? For any lower degree of financial and material economic expansion in the West will surely reduce the now far too big pressure on the world's vulnerable eco-system . It may also diminish the future the present destabilising flows of economic migration. And, last but not least, it can also liberate the whole world from their growing depedency from the big commercial powers, which oblige them and their children especially in the West to a never stopping joyless increase of their own consumption levels.

The earth is still waiting for its great year of Jubilee. But then it is our task to anticipate it already now : in our thoughts, in our life-style, in our words and prayers. Which means, said in other words :living in accordance with what Philip Potter once called Gods 'own' style of globalisation . Because that is not the style of the survival of the fitttest, but the style of the survival of the neglected and the weak. For is the Kingdom which once will fill the earth, not the kingdom of a healing shepherd?