<p>MF Global commingles customer funds with their own: nice way of saying they stole their customer money. Nobody goes to jail, many are put out of work as they never get those clearing funds back.</p>
<p>JP Morgan misuses customer funds in 2011, not to mention that they quite possible helped MF commingle the funds as a way to make sure they got their money. The little guy lost. Gasp.</p>
<p>Swaps are recently kept off of the open market. If you think this doesn’t effect you, you are a “muppet.” Or at least the guy running your retirement account is a muppet.</p>
<p>Jamie Dimon makes it so that his detractors have no access to the early voting on his chairmanship, even though he and his buddies on the board have open information.</p>
<p>It’s a long list. If I wasn’t exhausted by it, I’d go on. </p>
<p>My husband worked in options and exotics for a long, long time. He’s working consulting to a c3 company, now. The pay is hilarious, but he doesn’t need the money. What he needs is to do something good for the world now, which he is.</p>
<p>My view of wall street is that in very few cases do they provide value. They skim off the top whether they make money for you or not and really don’t know anything more about what is going on that anybody else.</p>
<p>Agree with UVB (#36) and BB (38). Both are needed. Each could not exist in the way they do without the other. Neither should feel superior to the other.</p>
<p>I cannot understand, nor do I think any person can, all of the different financial jobs. But I do know my D1, a trader, just promoted to associate, a peon, is one of the most ethical people I know. She also does, and has in HS and college, a tremendous amount of volunteer work. Anecdotal I do realize. </p>
<p>I also know that if the people she works with were unethical in any way she would try to do something about it. A man on her desk she greatly admired was fired several months ago. She said he was one of the most ethical and respected. But her bank found something he did or was part of an email and he was gone.</p>
<p>I’m just a bit fed up with " Wall Street" people being painted with the same brush. D1 does earn a lot. She earns what the market dictates.</p>
<p>I work in higher education. I have witnessed the most unethical, sleezy behavior by college presidents and provosts. I’ve seen some destroy careers and lives to make themselves look better or advance their agendas. College professors make decent six figure incomes. These type of people exist in every profession.</p>
<p>You will see. It’s not an ethical business. She should read The Art of War, Machiavelli, etc…</p>
<p>You can make a fortune in that business, but you need to understand you are not among ethical people. It’s just true.</p>
<p>We never have to work again around here, and that includes my kids, though they don’t know this and we would never tell them that. It doesn’t mean it’s an ethical business, and your daughter isn’t going to change that. Just make sure she knows not to let herself be changed.</p>
<p>Its a lot worse than it was 20 years ago, before the banks were allowed to buy up all the trading houses. At least it used to be separate.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing you have to understand. Your daughter thinks that he was let go because he did something unethical. No. He was let go because somebody more unethical than he is wanted his job and made sure he took the fall, or someone in charge and more unethical needed a scapegoat. </p>
<p>Being ethical is actually one of the ways you end up pirhanna food. </p>
<p>She will see. You will see. The day is young for her.</p>
<p>I just don’t get the hate towards Cohen. He’s been getting his amazing returns since he started trading (way back 25 years ago at Gruntel). You would think that after all these years and after firing many employees for getting mediocre returns, a few would have turned in evidence of him committing insider trading yet none have? Also, the feds have been watching him for a decade, even tapping his phone and nothing. Why can’t people admit that he just may be a great stock trader? </p>
<p>I hope the feds don’t make Cohen the next Milken. IMO Milken was PERSECUTED by Guiliani and should get a pardon and full apology. Boesky and Levine were real crooks (that got off easy btw). Milken’s crimes were technical violations at best and have never been treated as crimes before or since his “prosecution.” </p>
<p>edit: I believe one person has claimed Cohen cheats but he only said it after he got arrested so not sure I would believe the guy and he doesn’t have any evidence to back it up.</p>
<p>Here’s some stats from the second article: “A Business Week poll, for example, found that 52% of respondents wanted insider trading to remain unlawful. In order to determine whether investor anger over insider trading undermines their confidence in the markets, however, one must first identify the source of that anger. A Harris poll found that 55% of the respondents said they would inside trade if given the opportunity. Of those who said they would not trade, 34% said they would not do so only because they would be afraid the tip was incorrect. Only 35% said they would refrain from trading because insider trading is wrong. Here lies one of the paradoxes of insider trading. Most people want insider trading to remain illegal, but most people (apparently including at least some of the former) are willing to participate if given the chance to do so on the basis of accurate information. This paradox is central to evaluating arguments based on confidence in the market. Investors that are willing to inside trade if given the opportunity obviously have no confidence in the integrity of the market in the first instance. Any anger they feel over insider trading therefore has nothing to do with a loss of confidence in the integrity of the market, but instead arises principally from envy of the insider’s greater access to information.” (note: The third article linked says this poll was done during the Boesky scandal)</p>
<p>From the third article: “Every year I poll my corporate law class at the start of the materials on insider trading: “If you had confidential information about your corporate employer, which led you to believe that it was going down the tubes, would you sell any stock you owned in your employer?” Invariably, two-thirds or more answer affirmatively, even though subsequent inquiry suggests that virtually all of those class members already believe that selling their stock would be unlawful.”</p>
<p>In conclusion statistics clearly show that Wall Street is (at least when it comes to insider trading) in fact much MORE ethical than the average American and even more so than law school students (the latter is disturbing considering how important confidentiality is in the legal profession)</p>
<p>@LasMa: Im not saying everyone on Wall Street is ethical but evidence shows they are more ethical than the average population. Also, while I agree that legal doesn’t mean ethical, I believe for most people it does. If you look at how American society works, a person that creates a product that causes cancer in children of poor countries is ethical if he found that in USC 1.2.4.829 it says you can do that. However, someone like Rajat Gupta who made a one time mistake (a horrible and egregious one that DESERVES PRISON time but still a one time moment of great stupidity) is now a horrible person that deserves decades in prison in the minds of most people. I have trouble understanding that logic but IMO that is how most people think when they think of ethics. Basically people that commit financial crimes should get decades in jail because they are illegal. However, people that do other morally reprehensible things are ethical because they aren’t breaking the law. This is how most people think IMO</p>