The present economic crisis starts from deep cultural causes. Hans Küng, Nonino Prize 2012, has been denouncing this for long time. In his book Anständig wirtschaften. Warum Ökonomie Moral braucht, he gathers and presents in detail the errors and overvaluations driven into the market by a wild finance devoid of ethics that doesn’t have limits of avidity and doesn’t tolerate social safeguard rules. Resuming Hans Jonas’s lesson on “Responsibility and Reciprocity”, Küng acts as the spokesman for the essential needs of mankind as the expression of universal values, and to the reflection of those who take part in capitalistic economy he proposes a Manifesto for a Global Economic Ethic, listing the only principles that can help us out of a ruinous perspective, persuaded that the market, now more than ever, needs “clear rules of behavior everybody can accept”.

The prize is delivered by Antonio R. Damasio