The Shame of Wall Street

Bloomberg Business Week on Goldman Sachs:

In his extraordinarily public resignation letter, Greg Smith, who had spent time recruiting the best and the brightest to Goldman Sachs, wrote, “I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.”

The proper functioning of Wall Street is too vital to the economy to tolerate the duplicitous practices of Goldman and firms like it, especially after what the American people did to rescue these businesses in their darkest hours.

The country’s political class appears to lack the power or will to hold large financial institutions to account.

There is a massive leadership vacuum at the top of Wall Street today; and it’s quite possible that only continued, relentless public shaming will force the leaders of these firms to make the kinds of cultural changes necessary to bring their actions in line with normative behavior.