Does the ongoing anger over bank bonuses suggest the need for something akin to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the causes of the crisis?

You might think I have been spending just a little bit too much time outdoors over the summer; “Truth and Reconciliation” is the way nations like South Africa consign to history the egregious, state-supported human rights violations that have been committed against a large section of their people.

But bear with me for a moment and reflect on the breadth and degree of damage that the culture of greed managed to inflict by causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: an increase in the number of people around the world in chronic hunger and poverty by over 100 million, to 1.02 billion; between 200,000 and 400,000 more babies could die each year between now and 2015 if the crisis persists; an increase in global unemployment by between 29 million and 59 million people; one in eight US mortgage borrowers is behind on mortgage payments or facing foreclosure at the end of the second quarter 2009; pensioners relying on developed country stock market returns for their retirement incomes have seen their savings fall by 45%.

Let’s not forget the stories behind the numbers. My friend Mike’s mother has been working for General Motors her whole life and was due to retire this year. Now she has no pension and will likely be working for the rest of her life. For more stories, take a stroll through the New York Times’ Living With Less – The Human Side of the Global Recession.

No wonder people remain angry.

The political will to rein in Wall Street and the City of London’s high stakes culture is lacking, and the financial sector is doing everything within its power to undermine what will remains.

A report by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation found that $5 billion in political contributions over the past decade gained Wall Street freedom from regulation. According to OpenSecrets.org: “Despite the mortgage and banking crises of 2008, the financial sector still managed to donate $468.8 million to federal campaigns and candidates during the 2008 election cycle, an 80 percent increase during the two previous years.”

The Center for Responsive Politics notes that the finance, insurance and real estate sector spent $109.4 million on lobbying in the US during this year's second quarter alone, during which time the industry has been lobbying against the movement for tighter regulation provoked by the financial crisis.

How can we move forward?

We have a precedent for resolving situations where the will of government has been put at the service of powerful minority interests, to the detriment of the majority.

In 1995, after decades of the systematic abuse of economic, social and political rights known as apartheid, the South African government set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to give ordinary people an opportunity to air their grievances against a system that institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination in all aspects of life.

According to the then Minister of Justice Dullah Omar, "... a commission is a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation."

The TRC was a forum in which anyone who felt that he or she was a victim of the system could be heard. Those on both sides who had done wrong could also give testimony and request amnesty.
Dead babies will never learn to speak, and how do you give voice to the 100 million starving? But that does not negate the need for public, open and free discussion of the causes of the crisis, to confront those responsible with those they have impacted, to raise the question of prosecution and possible amnesty rather than assume as now a cosy settlement between corporations and regulators.

How else do governments and financial institutions expect the results of egregious risk taking at great cost to communities and individuals to be put behind us?

How else can we say that we are serious in our desire to stop this happening again?