FINANCIAL EDUCATION FOR BANKERS The education of the chief-economist of the NBR

Valentin Lazea, the chief-economist of the NBR, is making progress, setting foot into cultural territory.

In a speech at the Cristian Popişteanu symposium of April 26th, 2017, Valentin Lazea noted the need for our convergence with the North European culture, as a requirement for integration in the Eurozone: "Finally, cultural convergence, [should be achieved] which has only started being discussed recently and which is incomplete even in the Eurozone".

The wording is vague, it is unclear where and how discussing this need for cultural integration started and it is unclear what Valentin Lazea means by "recently", because the difference between the financial discipline in the predominantly protestant countries and the lack of discipline in predominantly catholic countries has been spoken about bitterly for at least five years:

"German catholic Stephan Richter, the head of the website «The Globalist», claims that if Martin Luther had been present in Maastricht, in 1992, when the bases of the European Monetary Union were laid, then he would have said «Listen! No catholic country, which hasn't gone through the Protestant reformation, should join the Eurozone!» Richter claims that «the excess of Catholicism affects the fiscal health of nations, even now, in the 21st century»".

The aforementioned quote is excerpted from an article I wrote two and a half years ago - the REUNIFICATION OF CATHOLICISM AND ORTHODOXY - 4th EPISODE /The religious war of debts /BURSA January 26 2015, but I never claimed that I was providing "recent" information, because Richter made that statement in September 2012.

But to Lazea, a discussion from 2012 is still "recent", in 2017.

I agree that the problem is still current, but the debate isn't "recent".

Maybe he was the one to find out about it "recently".

Meanwhile, I've published two books on this topic of the moral and cultural perspective on the financial-banking life: the first at the end of 2015, called "The solution to the crisis / Terminus a quo", at RAO Publishing, and the second, in parts, in BURSA, in the beginning of this year, called "The golden calf /The meaning of interest".

I don't know why Lazea didn't read them.

The two books have no precedent in Romanian literature and present some priorities in hermeneutics.

I tried to make them accessible, I have avoided the excessive conceptualization, by exploiting my experience as a journalist.

As long as these two books are available, you can't say what Valentin Lazea has said, or else you'll look ignorant: "Thus we can speak about two types of culture, a central and Northern-European one (Germanic) and a Mediterranean one (Latin), with fundamentally different characteristics.

"The first type of culture is characterized by honoring commitments and contracts; that requirement is less strict in the second. In Central and Northern-European culture the repayment of debts is sacred, not so in the Mediterranean culture. In the former type of culture the individual is, in general responsible for his actions (like an adult), while in the second culture he is irresponsible (like a child) and constantly waits for a rescue from the parent state".

No, in the matter of fiscal discipline, the continental criteria of northern/southern positioning of the behavior distinction and the Germanic/Latin ethnicity criteria are subordinated to the religious Protestant/catholic criterion, meaning that Lazea's statement that we are talking about "Germanic" culture is inaccurate, because only 30% of Germans are Protestants, meaning that the majority shows tolerance towards failing to meet contractual obligations, causing the Protestant disapproval and contempt from the countries where those are in the majority.

It is ridiculous to talk about "Germanic" culture, without Germany.

It is embarrassing not to expose the factors that cause the difference in behavior between Catholics and Protestants, over a century from the writing of the series of essays "Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus" ("Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism") by Max Weber.

The serious issue of the lack of culture of Lazea is not that the chief-economist of the NBR is making a fool of himself.

It may sting, but its' not that important.

No, what's important is that the ignorance is making Lazea say things that I don't think he intended to say, if he understood what he is actually saying:

"It is obvious that Romania, which belongs to the Mediterranean type of culture, can't belong to the Eurozone if it doesn't adopt a Central and Northern European culture. I would dare say that, even if we fulfilled all those other criteria (nominal, juridical, legal), but we didn't meet the cultural one, that would be an insurmountable obstacle for our entering in the Eurozone."

No, on this issue it is irrelevant whether we are Latin or Mediterranean, that the Bulgarians and Greeks are not Latin, but we have many similarities, because we are Orthodox.

Poor Valentin Lazea doesn't understand that Romania has no business being in the Eurozone, as long as we don't drop Orthodoxy and switch to Protestantism.

I don't think that's what he means to be saying, but that's what he is saying, the poor thing.

Lazea wants in the Eurozone.

He could be suspected of not wanting it, since he raises the issue of converting the country to Protestantism.

But no, he sincerely wants in the Eurozone, because he appreciates the culture of the north as desirable: "And to end on a pessimistic note, I don't think that the voter-oriented populist democracy that we have, in which every party, on the left or on the right, permanently behaves as if it were in an electoral campaign, by promising only pleasant things and concealing the unpleasant ones, could ever direct the population of Romania towards the cultural convergence with the desirable (Northern) part of Europe".

That's where he made a mess of things, by expanding the area of involuntary messages, because, when all is said and done, Lazea seems to recommend to political parties religious conversion programs to the population, to the "desirable" Protestantism of the North.

That aberration is the result of ignorance.

Had he read my books, then maybe he wouldn't have been so certain that the mentality of the north is desirable, or at the very least he would have realized the reasons why he should value his ancestors.

I don't want to discourage Lazea, on the contrary, it looks to me like a progress that he has become sensitive co cultural issues.

I think that from that point of view, the NBR became a kind of a cultural spearhead for the banking system, stigmatized by ignorance, arrogant boorishness, immorality and tuxedo-dressed stupidity.

On Friday, the NBR hosted a lecture from the philosopher.

It's an effort worth repeating.