Wall Street power player: We’re incentivized to cheat:
Well, as we now know from Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder, too-big-to-fail is also too-big-to-jail. We now have admissions by the federal government that, in fact, this behavior was not extensively examined or investigated because of systemic issues.
It raises an interesting point, doesn’t it? Because if now, as the senior member of a bank, or the board of a bank, I know that there are no criminal penalities for breaking the rules, don’t I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders to actually play fast and loose? Because if I get caught, that’s just the cost of doing business? I know it’s a frightening thought, but if carried to its logical extreme—if truly people believe that because of their size, they can’t be prosecuted, it actually brings forth a new issue of moral hazard extreme: illegal behavior.
That’s why equality under the law is an important concept – one that is being violated now.
Taking it to the extremes.