ABSTRACT
The bank’s risk managers never investigated deeply enough because of “longstanding ties that clouded their judgment” and, of course, booming short-term earnings. If one believed in the original American message to the economies of the world, to open a major newspaper any day is to have one’s heart broken anew. One looks in vain for some American, man or woman, in this sad story who said “no.” That same day, the New York Times, in one of its front-page articles on what could come to be the collapse of the American economy, noted that even President-Elect Barack Obama, despite surely wanting to do the right thing on re-regulation of our gone-wild economy, nevertheless brought into his economic team men like Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers. The problem that the president-elect faces, then, is a moment not only of grave economic collapse outside, but essentially of profound moral collapse inside.
