Ethical Behavior And Its Relative From American Business

2003 Words9 Pages
Ethical behaviour, and its relative absence in American business

In a school setting, grade school or university, when the subject of cheating comes up,the matter is generally discussed with the gravity you might expect. When the recent cheating scandal erupted at harvard University, one of the points made by way of explanation was the fear of failure, an extension of which is the unwillingness to fail...

If a popular? discussion of cheating in university examinations starts with ambiguity over the nature of the act, that is, is the sin cheating -or getting caught? you 're already half way along on the destruction of moral integrity and more than half way to understanding American corporate crime. What exactly is a criminal act, or…show more content…
In the last three years, the banks have spent according to one estimate, just south of two billion dollars spread over some three thousand lobbyists to defeat financial regulation. And this is only the tip of the iceberg floating slightly above and hugely below the surface of Dodd-Frank. The ideologically based appointment of regulators unsympathetic to the idea of regulation, had the kind of effect you might suppose. When the regulated door to the henhouse was thrown open, every foxy banker on Wall Street came to dine.

The rampant opposition to regulation in the States is understandable when you consider the money to be made in its absence. The current state of the US economy may be traced back to the lack of effective regulation of the banking industry, starting with the apparently totally unregulated mortgage brokerage. Had there been enforcement of existing regulation obliging due diligence in the granting of mortgages, there could have been none of the fraudulently granted mortgages that proved to be the toxic ingredient in certain mortgage-based investment instruments dreamed up by the banks. Known as Collateralized Debt Obligations, these are individual loans sold in packages--such as groups of mortgages.

If you nailed a Wall Street banker, trader or ratings agent to the nearest wall and demanded a definition of ethical behaviour, he 'd be more likely to offer a
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