Finance and Greed

            Reading Robert Shiller’s Finance and the Good Society has reinforced many of the ideas that I have previously held about the financial sector and about the corporate world in general.  In my experience, many people make jokes about businesspeople lacking moral compasses and choosing to make unethical decision in order to increase wealth for only themselves.  However, especially among students at Notre Dame who joke about the “Menbroza” College of Business, there seems to be an underlying sense that they aren’t completely joking. 
            Of course, not everyone who works on Wall Street makes honorable decisions.  Professionals like Bernie Madoff who create elaborate Ponzi schemes that rob people of retirement and college funds have earned financiers the reputation that they hold to a portion of the public, especially following the burst of the housing bubble in 2007 that affected consumers around the world.  I have noticed that people tend to be very suspicious of bankers and investment managers when skepticism seems to be the only form of protection against fraud because, as Shiller mentions, financial innovations and practices deal with “their hopes, their promises, [and] their life savings” (13).  They are also not comforted by movies such as The Wolf of Wall Street, which celebrates the life that Jordan Belfort built for himself through fraud. 

            Shiller, however, presents an alternative to the greed that Wall Street seems to exude.  This is not the fault of the capitalist system itself, he claims, but at the current version of it.  Part of the process of advancement through the “goal” or “finis” from which finance is etymologically derived is the increasing efficiency of the system and the regulation that aims to prevent scams from the past (7).

Bridget O'Reilly

Comments

  1. jdoutFebruary 8, 2018 at 10:07 AM

    Thank you, Bridget, for this thoughtful response to Shiller's book. As we mentioned in class today, discussion of money must always be anchored to a particular time and place, because money is always about the present. I wonder what thoughts you might append to your article, now that you are aware that of the recent legislation passed in the Indiana House of Representatives re: payday lenders and usury. Do you still share Shiller's optimism about the "regulation that aims to prevent scams of the past" (7)? What about the scams of the present?!

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