Churchmen condemn City "bank robbers"

Church leaders have condemned City traders as "bank robbers" and have called for tighter regulation of the market.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written an article in the Spectator, due to be published Friday, in which he launches a scathing attack on short-sellers and traders and calls for better regulation.

"It is no use pretending that the financial world can maintain indefinitely the degree of exemption from scrutiny and regulation that it has got used to," he wrote.

And in a speech to bankers, Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu accused traders who bet on falling profits of being "bank robbers and asset strippers".

Yesterday, Dr Sentamu told bankers the market system appeared to have taken its rules "from Alice in Wonderland".

The Archbishop also drew attention to the proposed plan from the US government to plough $700 billion into the financial system to prevent further meltdown.

At the annual dinner of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, he said: "One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5 billion to save six million children's lives.

"World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they tell us that action for the poorest is too expensive?"

Dr Williams was also critical of the market conditions that have produced the financial crisis.

He said the idea that the only way to create wealth is through entrepreneurship is akin to fundamentalism.

"Fundamentalism is a religious word, not inappropriate to the nature of the problem.

"Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else."