The More We Hear About Goldman, the Worse it Sounds

We now are seeing e-mails from Goldman Sachs executives in which they bragged about their smarts in shorting the housing market--the same market they and their colleagues on Wall Street helped fuel with their financial incentives.

Is there any wonder that people are worried about a "double dip" in the current economic recovery? Does anyone doubt that there are some investors trying to drive down the economic recovery so that they can make money?

One really has to wonder about the moral compass of most of the financial market executives. If all they are concerned about is making money, we are all in trouble. These are money managers. They have not made anything of tangible value for society. They have not bettered our lives in any way. They simply manage money--actually paper. They have no connection in their minds between that paper and a real person who is impacted by their decisions. It is all about bragging rights, the next yacht, the next house in the Hamptons.

This is an industry operating by a set of values and morals that are separate from the rest of the society. We should stop coupling Wall Street with the rest of corporate America. People often talk about the "sharks" in the business world. Most companies are not comprised of sharks, but rather large wales. Wall Street contains some sharks, but we have seen that they can be worse. Some can be can pyranha. They will attack and eat anything they see. They seem motivated only by their own hunger for more and not by any sense of contribution to the larger society.