Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
I found that options traders - the Amex was mainly an options exchange - routinely conspired to keep as wide as possible the spreads between the prices investors paid and the prices floor traders paid for the same securities.
Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.
In the business world, allegations of accounting irregularities is tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theater, except, today, in our Internet world, instead of people running for the exit signs, they just push the button on their computer.
Getting an unsophisticated client was the golden prize. The quickest way to make money on Wall Street is to take the most sophisticated product and try to sell it to the least sophisticated client.
That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice ... They built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience.
The fund scandals shined the spotlight on the fact that mutual fund managers were putting their interests ahead of the fund shareholders who trusted them, which had much more substantial consequences in the form of excessive fees and the promotion - as the market moved into the stratosphere - of technology funds and new economy funds which were soon to collapse.
Over 70% of what are called corruption (cases), even by EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) and other anti-corruption agencies, is not corruption, but common stealing.
Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, has seen a few financial schemes in his time. As the lead local prosecutor in the world's financial capital, he has battled frauds like the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which stole billions of dollars from investors worldwide.
If medical doctors can be sued for malpractice, shouldn't financial professionals practice under the same safeguard?
We've got to start also holding people accountable, and we've got to reward people who succeed. But somehow in Washington today - and I'm afraid on Wall Street - greed is rewarded, excess is rewarded, and corruption - or certainly failure to carry out our responsibility is rewarded.
