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Professor Dr. Dr. Wolfgang Berger, economist and philosopher, is among the critics of an absolute basic prerequisite of today's financial system: interest. In the following interview he reveals present conditions, risks and alternatives. "Interest is part of the system and it has side effects which therefore also belong to the system - terrible side effects."

by Lars Schal, Translation Lucy Streng

Prof. Wolfgang Berger, Ph. D., M.A. (Econ), born 1941 in Kassel, Germany, is a philosopher and economist. He studied economics and philosophy in Grenoble/France and Durham/USA, graduating as Dr. phil. in philosophy and Dr. rer. pol. in economics at Freie Universität Berlin and Technische Universität Berlin within the framework of a research assignment by the Max Planck Society. Subsequently, he worked as senior manager in Europe and overseas for 20 years.

From 1988 until 1997 he was employed as professor for business administration at Pforzheim University, including one year at California State University in Hayward/USA. Since 1997 he has been leading the Business Reframing Institute in Karlsruhe (see http://www.business-reframing.de) which he founded himself. In his book "Business Reframing - Erfolg durch Resonanz" [Business Reframing - Success from Response], published by Gabler (3rd edition, ISBN 978-3-409-38895-5), he presented his concept of interior corporate re-orientation.

Professor Berger, we are in the midst of a so called global "financial crisis". Is this frequently used term really suitable for the problem or would it be more appropriate to speak of a systemic debt crisis?

We can continue calling it "financial crisis", because the debts which outgrew a number of real estate buyers in the USA at first, followed by many system-relevant banks and now most public authorities all over the world, are necessary for our financial regulation. Imagine they would all be able to and would pay back their debts at once, becoming completely debt-free. Then we would find ourselves within a systemic crisis overshadowing everything we experienced up to today. When Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget of the US, he was criticized by the former head of the central bank, Alan Greenspan, who reminded him to bear in mind that pension funds would no longer know where to invest, if the state no longer got into debt.

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