If we forget finance’s indispensable role in modern economies, says Samuel Gregg, research director for the Acton Institute, in an op-ed for The Detroit News, it’s guaranteed that everyone will be worse off.

Finance establishes links between the economic present and economic future of individuals munities. It helps us manage risk and develops methods for continually enhancing the management of risk over the short, medium and long term. And it creates economic value by enabling money to assume the characteristics of capital.

Note that none of these functions are exercises in radical individualism. Finance can certainly help make us independent, but it also increases and is a sign of our interdependence.

Read more here. The op-ed is adapted from Gregg’s For God and Profit: How Banking and Finance Can Serve the Common Good.