This quote from Jeffrey Sachs might offer some context:
“Look, I meet a lot of those people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now... I know them. These are the people I have lunch with. And I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as pathological. [these people] have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients; they have no responsibility to counter parties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent. They genuinely believe they have a God-given right to take as much money as they possibly can in any way that they can get it, legal or otherwise.
If you look at campaign contributions, which I happened to do yesterday, the financial markets are the number one campaign contributors in the US system right now. We have a corrupt politics to the core.. both parties are up to their necks in this.
But what it’s lead to is this a sense of impunity that is really stunning, and you feel it on the individual level right now. And it’s very, very unhealthy, I have waited four years, five years now to see one figure on Wall Street speak in a moral language. And I’ve not seen it once.”
“Look, I meet a lot of those people on Wall Street on a regular basis right now... I know them. These are the people I have lunch with. And I am going to put it very bluntly: I regard the moral environment as pathological. [these people] have no responsibility to pay taxes; they have no responsibility to their clients; they have no responsibility to counter parties in transactions. They are tough, greedy, aggressive, and feel absolutely out of control in a quite literal sense, and they have gamed the system to a remarkable extent. They genuinely believe they have a God-given right to take as much money as they possibly can in any way that they can get it, legal or otherwise.
If you look at campaign contributions, which I happened to do yesterday, the financial markets are the number one campaign contributors in the US system right now. We have a corrupt politics to the core.. both parties are up to their necks in this.
But what it’s lead to is this a sense of impunity that is really stunning, and you feel it on the individual level right now. And it’s very, very unhealthy, I have waited four years, five years now to see one figure on Wall Street speak in a moral language. And I’ve not seen it once.”