Current Issues of Economic Interest at Wall Street - Essay Example

Most of the transactions were considered nonethical as the banks concentrated on proprietary trading at the expense of their customer services. Such is the scenario currently where businesses have concentrated on personal gains at the expense of their customers’ service delivery.

The Wall Street Greed tendency has been captured clearly by a scholar named Michael Douglas (Heesun, Page 10-45). Even though Douglas asserts that greed sometimes can benefit businesses whenever they serve their customers, he concurs that the very same greed only benefits a few individuals but only to a certain extent. The general argument by most Wall Street publishers is that if a business’s profits are highly based on the prosperity of its customers then the general assumption is that whatever is good for the customers must be good for society. Such assertions form the basis of Wall Street Greed currently.

Critics further argue that the Wall Street Greed, as exhibited today, is all about Wall Street itself (Heesun, Page 5-35). The interest of Wall Street has been totally separated from the interest of the society at large. Ethics forms the basis of any economic implications for the decisions made by businesses within the economy. There has been a shift in argument in the sense that initially, assertions were that for any economic meltdown or any bailout involving larger amounts of the taxpayers’ money does not necessarily lie with the banks but rather it now revolves around the ethics and values embraced by the businesses within the economy.  

The Wall Street case has clearly shown that there is a major breakdown between the business activities and priorities of most organizations and the ethical values that should be attached to them (Heesun, Page 15-85). There has been a continuous disconnect between ethics and economic freedom. In most cases, individual perception of the available opportunities has significantly influenced the business decisions of most organizations. This has resulted in the individualistic tendencies of most organizations posting on Wall Street. The Wall Street Greed has elicited a lot of interest on the topic of economic crime. Of greater concern is the role of the Department of Justice. In the recent past, there has been a tendency by the Department of Justice to let people walk away freely even after committing serious economic crimes.

Mostly it is the bank’s executives who commit the economic crimes and still walk freely without the Department for Justice prosecuting any of them (Heesun, Page 20-65). This is evident from the manner in which the Department of Justice has handled the cases arising from the 2008 crisis whereby there has never been any major prosecution of the perpetrators. With most Americans struggling under the current economic conditions, there has been little hope of there being any significant improvement in the state of affairs. Banks have gained significantly in terms of profits while the general public is stills stuck where they were. Other readers have even claimed that things have gone from bad to worse and that the banks are least interested in the general welfare of the public. All they care about is their profits and how best they can increase their profits further. Such economic greed becomes of common interest to the readers of Wall Street.