Blog: Is Wall Street Crooked?

Submitted by Jude McDaniel, March 16, 2012

Time for a philosophical question.  Does Wall street cheat?  Who do you mean by Wall Street?  The companies and bankers  that trade on the Wall Street  markets  or the banks that finance them or all American companies and banks?    Regardless of how you define who is included in Wall Street the vast majority of those companies try very hard to follow the rules, do things right and take care of their customer.  It is the best way to do business and make a profit.

What I have seen is that the more complicated the process for any business to succeed, the  greater the regulations and the more paperwork, the more likely it is that a business will be tempted to  cheat.  Take away the complication and create an atmosphere where it is profitable to make more money honestly than to cheat and most companies  will have no desire to cheat.

There will always be the Bernie Madoff types, who cheat because that is the only way they know how to do business. There will be type of industries that Erin Brockovich goes after, who choose to cover up their destruction and damage to the environment.  Of course, there will always be invincible little CEO’s who think they are gods and see their employees as assets and not people.  We will still need rules and laws because some people will not play fair no matter what their opportunities.  This is the stuff that makes for good movies and long jail terms, not good bank accounts.