Dirty business

Ending Moral Rot on Wall Street, Part 1: William D. Cohan

By William D. Cohan

This decay of Wall Street mores hasn’t gone unnoticed -- at least not by Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. In a speech in June to a group of financial journalists, a few weeks after his office won the high-profile conviction of the hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnamon 14 charges of insider trading, he wondered about the implications of widespread illegal behavior.

Rampant Corruption

“The bigger and better question may not be whether insider trading is rampant, but whether corporate corruption in general is rampant, whether ethical bankruptcy is on the rise, whether corrupt business models are becoming more common?”
“Some of the most egregious securities frauds,” he added, have occurred “in some of the most prominent and powerful, publicly traded companies, consulting firms, accounting firms, and even law firms.”
These crimes are being committed, he said, by people who“have already made more money than could ever be spent in one lifetime and achieved more impressive success than could ever be chronicled in one obituary. And it begs the question, is corporate culture becoming increasingly corrupt?”
Yes, it certainly does raise that question.
Full text