'On the Wrongfulness of Bank Contributions to Financial Crises' - Richard Endörfer @ In Conversation

What, exactly, makes banks morally responsible when their actions help trigger financial crises? In this interview, Richard Endörfer explores the ethical foundations of that question by comparing three major perspectives: virtue ethics, consequentialism, and contractualism. Starting from a simple but powerful idea — that bank contributions are wrongful because they causally contribute to a collective harm — Richard shows why the issue is more complex than it first appears. Virtue ethics and consequentialism each capture part of the problem, but both face important limitations: the former may judge too few harmful contributions as wrong, while the latter can justify them if the harms are outweighed by benefits to others. Against this background, Richard argues that contractualism offers a more convincing framework for understanding the moral wrong of banks’ roles in financial crises. The interview opens up a rich discussion of responsibility, harm, and the ethical evaluation of systemic financial behavior. A debate follows the interview.