Even the BANKERS know the public is being fleeced.

November 11, 2013 11:00 AM

The Shamelessness of Bankers (Click on this headline to read more)

By Richard RJ Eskow 

 

It's not easy to maintain a civil tone while describing the magnitude of the misbehavior among executives at Wall Street's largest institutions. To criticize bankers is to describe large-scale wrongdoing, mass-produced outrage which leads to widespread misery. It can't be done without routinely deploying words like "perjury," "forgery," "fraud," "deceit," "corruption," and "rapaciousness."

Unfortunately, the forms of speech which adequately convey big-banker behavior also make it easy for insiders in politics, government, and the media to dismiss that same speech as excessive.
That's one reason why some recent remarks by William Dudley, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, are so important. He's no outsider, and he's no extremist. And yet, after exploring potential solutions to the "too big to fail" problem in a speech to Global Economic Policy Forum last week, Dudley went on to discuss what he called "the apparent lack of respect for law, regulation and the public trust."

Added Dudley: "There is evidence of deep-seated cultural and ethical failures at many large financial institutions."

Two phrases in particular bear repeating: "the apparent lack of respect for law, regulation and the public trust," and "deep-seated cultural and ethical failures."