Archbishop calls speculators "bank robbers"

By Adrian Croft

LONDON (Reuters) - The two top Church of England bishops have taken aim at the role speculators and bankers played in world financial market turmoil, with one churchman attacking "bank robbers" and "asset strippers."

Archbishop of York John Sentamu, the church's second-ranking clergyman, savaged short-sellers who he said had driven Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS to accept a takeover bid from rival Lloyds TSB.

"To a bystander like me, those who made 190 million pounds deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS ... are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers," he said in a speech to international bankers in London on Wednesday evening.

"We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from 'Alice in Wonderland', where the share value of a bank is no longer dependent on the strength of its performance but rather on the willingness of the government to bail it out," he said.

Short sellers -- who sell borrowed stock in the hope its price will fall, allowing them to buy it back more cheaply -- have faced strong criticism for aggressively targeting banks such as HBOS, driving down their shares. Responding to the concerns, Britain and the United States have temporarily banned short-selling of financial stocks.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of the global Anglican Church, criticised lending and borrowing that was not about "equipping someone to do something specific, but exclusively about enabling profit."

Probing the causes of the global financial market crisis in an article in The Spectator magazine, he criticised some financial transactions as the invisible "Emperor's new clothes."

A collapse in U.S. subprime mortgages -- loans to borrowers with patchy credit histories -- has sent shockwaves through the global financial system.