Consumers responsible for preventing corruption
According to a Labaton Sucharow study released Tuesday, many of the market players on Wall Street believe that unethical practices and conduct are not only permissible — they’re necessary to get ahead. Nearly 30 percent of those who answered the survey felt that their institutions incentivized breaking the rules. Sixteen percent admitted flat-out that they would engage in insider trading if they knew no one would catch them.
The hard lessons that many Americans have learned from the Great Recession have apparently slipped by unnoticed for the men and women who caused it. For Wall Street, it continues to be business as usual.
How do we get a sense of integrity back into our financial markets? The words “government intervention” often seem to point in a good direction, before they get lost in shouting matches between so-called capitalists and socialists — terms that each political side uses to denounce its opponents. No matter what party is in power today or 10 years from now, the fact of the matter remains that today’s financial market has become too corrupt to trust but too convoluted and menacing to do anything about.
Whistleblower protections are another avenue, but the survey went on to report that relatively few financial workers knew the benefits of these programs. And, in simplest terms, nobody likes a tattle-tale — meaning that many financial employees feel that, by trying to keep their industry accountable, they would be putting themselves and their careers in danger.
Perhaps it all starts with the consumer. After all, we are all customers of the financial system — our loans and mortgages, our savings and investments. Organic foods and “made in America” products are all results of consumers using their buying power to change the way an industry does business. Perhaps we can do the same for Wall Street. If we took an active interest in how our banks use our money — not just in terms of their investment risks, but in terms of their effects on the market as a whole — we may be able to change a culture that for years has rewarded taking the easy road to getting a profit rather than the high road.
Instead of crying for the government to save us, or believing that an invisible hand will come along and make everyone moral again, we can turn the American consumer base into a formidable force that Wall Street will have to answer to every time it steps out of line. It all starts with asking the right questions and doing research to find out just what these people do with your hard-earned dollars — and threatening to take your business elsewhere when they fail to meet your standards.
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