July 28 (Bloomberg) — Vatican Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said free-market economics legitimized greed, citing the 1987 Oliver Stone movie “Wall Street” and its protagonist, the corporate raider Gordon Gekko.

“Greed market has substituted free market,” Bertone said today in a speech to Italian senators in Rome. “Greed is good, greed is right,” Bertone said, citing one of Gekko’s famous lines from the film, in outlining the contents of Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical calling for a new financial order.
“Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty,” Benedict wrote in the encyclical.
bloomberg

Translation:
The very basic definition of greed is “Wanting to live the best life possible”. Calling geed per-se evil is therefor equal to calling life evil (which fits into the common christian belief system with heaven being the goal of life instead of trying to build a “heaven” on earth. And yes, I know, there are christian beliefs with different views).

Of course what the Vatican ignores is, that there is rational greed and irrational greed. A greedy rational person will not put all his money on a lottery. He will think long-term. And these plans of course will include the whole world and society.

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