Eric Williams's List: Justice

• 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."
• that they are not worthy of the public's trust
• a reluctant attitude toward the criminal prosecution of bankers.

• That's no surprise. How can legal safeguards be maintained when the money these institutions spend taints the political process from beginning to end? How can bank executives learn "respect for law, regulation and the public trust" when they are subject to the flattery of journalists, rather than the scrutiny of journalists? (See Roger Lowenstein'spuff piece about bank CEO Jamie Dimon in the New York Times Magazine for a classic example of that genre.)

   

  And how can the society of big bank executives heal from its "deep-seated cultural and ethical failures" when those executives are treated as found some economic wisdom, worthy of demanding sacrifices from others through political lobbying groups like Fix the Debts still believe that their names lend credibility to their efforts rather than casting shame on all of them.

   

  "When pride cometh," says the Bible in Proverbs, "then cometh shame." Maybe that word should form the collective noun for members of that profession. Like "a pride of lions": a "shame of bankers."
• our society seems to have rejected the idea that there is any dignity in the life of ordinary, law-abiding working people.
• The politicians want campaign contributions. The senior government officials want to follow the revolving-door route followed by the likes of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Peter Orszag, also have become wealthy as employees, consultants, or speech-givers to the largest Wall Street institutions.
• "He that trouble in his own house shall inherit the wind," said the same passage in Proverbs. We can't depend on a higher power to make those words reality. We need to use the tools we have been given - tools which include the law, our social norms, and moral clarity - to protect ourselves from the shamelessness of bankers.

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