Shocking Things Wall Street Financiers Say Off
the Record About Their Bloated, Corrupt Industry
“A particularly
troubling and consistent finding throughout the survey is that Wall Street’s
future leaders–the young professionals who will one day assume control of the
trillions of dollars that the industry manages—have lost their moral compass,
accept corporate wrongdoing as a necessary evil and fear reporting this
misconduct.”
In a shocking new survey commissioned by the Labaton Sucharow law firm, Wall Street insiders say that breaking the law,
screwing your clients and covering up crimes is a way of life on Wall Street.
The shock is not that cheating is going on. We all know that. The shock is that
these financiers would actually admit it on a survey. This should tell us that
the Wall Street culture is so brazenly corrupt, so confident of not getting
caught, so certain that a passive public won’t fight back that those surveyed
didn’t even bother to lie about the fact that they were living, breathing
sociopaths.
Here are some of the key
findings of this sample of 250 traders, portfolio managers, investment bankers,
hedge fund professionals, financial analysts, investment advisors, asset
managers and stock brokers.
Catch me if you can!
“24% of financial
services professionals likely would engage in insider trading to make $10
million… if they wouldn’t get arrested. That figure surges to 38% for
individuals with 10 years or less in the industry.”
Screw your clients.
“28% of financial
services professionals feel that the financial services industry does not put
clients’ interests first.” They do it, so we have to do it
too. “More than half of respondents–52%–felt it was likely that their
competitors have engaged in unethical or illegal activity to gain an edge in
the market; 24% felt employees at their own company likely have engaged in
misconduct to get ahead.”
Guess what? We still are
cheating.
“Misconduct is still
widespread in the financial services industry; 23% of respondents
indicated that they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing
in the workplace.”
To rise in a criminal
organization, you have to be a criminal.
“Looking at seniority,
36% of respondents with 10 years or less experience in the industry believed
financial services professionals may have to engage in misconduct to get
ahead.”
The boss loves it when
you cheat.
“17% of respondents felt
that if leaders of their organization suspected that a top performer was
earning large profits from insider trading, they likely would ignore the
problem. More alarming, 15% of professionals in the industry believed that if
leaders of their organization learned that a top performer had engaged in
insider trading, they were unlikely to report that crime to law enforcement or
regulatory authorities.”
(Bloomberg News
columnist Jonathan Weil comes to Wall Street’s defense by calling the survey a “worthless smear” because it’s not a scientific sample. But
“scientific” or not, he has no explanation at all for why sizable percentages
of these 250 respondents are so ethically challenged.)
Are the big banks and
hedge funds criminal enterprises?
Given the attitudes of our
financial elites, you would expect bad things to happen. The list of high
crimes and misdemeanors is mind boggling, and growing every day.
Republished with
permission from: AlterNet
1 comment:
THANK YOU FOR THIS ARTICLE!
Back when 911 happened EVERYBODY was enraged because the Towers, the emblem of "Our Financial System" was destroyed and EVERYBODY wanted to build it back to show the world how powerful and resiliant we were. What was destroyed was the most corrupt, illegal, and EVIL representation of a system run by bloodsuckers whose job is to enrich themselves at the expense of the pain and suffering of the rest of the world. All the PTB had to do was called on the distorded idea about PATRIOTISM that they had engraved in our minds to have us up in arms clamoring to have built again, how very ironic, how stupid we are, when are we going to wake up?
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