I just finished reading ‘A Crisis for Financial Journalism’ from Polis (check them out!) and found it interesting in many ways, not least that I had not asked the question, ‘have journalists failed to put the financial system under enough scrutiny?’ – and realized that I had not asked the question because I had not expected them to do so. I assumed they would serve the ‘powers that be’ – and that their accountability was to their niche, not to the rest of society. As a former journalist (not in the financial world), I am embarrassed to admit this. But it follows a general theme I have recently noticed about myself and many others – that as the world of finance has become increasingly complex, I and others have let ourselves ignore it, and not aim to understand, explain and re-embed it into our society. This is the fault of the profession in which I currently train,. development studies, as much as anyone else. Collectively, we must recognize that we let one part of our system (a very, very important part) go off into its own world – as if that world was somehow disconnected from the ‘real world’ in which we live.
