Banks need to think through their ethics very carefully, and many have done so. I don't know any bank that dismisses the concept of ethical banking.

I happen to know a bit about banking.

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary. In a human sacrifice to deity there might be at least a mistaken and terrible beauty; in the rites of the moneychangers, where greed, laziness, and envy were assumed to move all men's acts, even the terrible became banal.

As a civilised society, we have a duty to support those among us who are vulnerable and in need. When times are hard, that duty should be felt more than ever, not disappear or diminish.

I don't believe in good human beings, but I believe you can have structures that make it easier to make the right choice or the wrong choice.

Let's be clear, I'm one of the thicker bishops in the Church of England.