If you lived in Washington in the 1970s during Watergate, you picked up the Washington Post early each morning with palpable excitement. What new revelation about the Nixon White House would leap off page one? It was a story that never died.
If you are in the New York area this summer, there’s a similar vibe building. But this time it’s about Wall Street. What new revelation about the banks will break today? The question is no longer whether the big banks might have broken the law and cheated, causing enormous economic damage to Americans and the world. The evidence is clear that they did. The question now is what else and, more importantly, whether a weak-kneed US President Barack Obama has the courage to do anything but yelp about it.
To suggest that Wall Street is a criminal enterprise is unfair to thousands who work in US finance. Most Wall Streeters get in early, eat at their desks getting eye strain from screens flashing green digits, and ride the subway home tired each night, hoping their bosses didn’t do something that will cost them their jobs.
But just as Watergate exposed a dark side of Washington that cast a shadow across an entire city, the bank scandals revealed an above-the-law mentality emanating from the top of the world’s largest financial companies. That mentality suggests Wall Street executives believe they can personally get away with anything. If caught, the shareholders pay the fines, the bank pays for all legal fees and nobody even has to surrender the bonuses.