Thus the study of financial fraud received little attention. Practically no research institutes exist; collaboration between economists and criminologists is rare; in the leading departments there are few specialists and very few students. Economists have soft-pedaled the role of fraud in every crisis they examined, including the Savings & Loan debacle, the Russian transition, the Asian meltdown and the dot.com bubble.
They continue to do so now. At a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute in New York on April 17, the closest a former Under Secretary of the Treasury, Peter Fisher, got to this question was to use the word 'naughtiness.' This was on the day that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with fraud."
James K. Galbraith, Why the 'Experts' Failed to See How Financial Fraud Collapsed the Economy, May 16, 2010
"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make a man a more clever devil."
C. S. Lewis
"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them."
John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
Today was a classic 'wash and rinse' on Wall Street, an operation about as simple and obvious as a street game of 'three card monte.'
It is a waste of time and a kind of complicity to try and rationalize it.
And on the surface many people seem to be asking for it.
They can't get enough of con men and quackery.
Whacko-ness and hysteria drive out rational judgement. By design.
Have a pleasant evening.
