“The finest schools in America produced a criminal elite that stole the store in less than a decade."

Commentary by Roger Erickson

No, that wasn't written by Bill Black.

Rather, it's the final output from recently demised Alexander Cockburn - and, incidentally, highly recommended (personally) by a pre-eminent chronicler of the MICC and Pentagon corruption.

A Road Trip Through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture

Is that what "No Child Left Behind" was really all about? Creating a Gresham's dynamic, where the Keating-5 could be free to become the Cheating-450, and then the Keeping-1%?

"Everyone's doing it!" The new motto for the GOP AND DNP alike.

Even a return to Glass-Steagall wouldn't be enough. We need to set our sights high enough to survive a context ol' Mr. Glass couldn't have imagined the extent of. We need a Black-Cockburn Act, to once again impose minimal separation of graft and state.

ps: How long will it take us to recover the storehouse of Middle Class resiliency ... if we can do it at all?

Bill Black — America Has Become a "Cheater-Take-All" Nation

Why do people like Tyler Cowen still equate wealth with merit? Many rich people are just crooks....

Tyler Cowen’s new book Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation warns that inequality will only get worse as a "hyper-meritocracy" of smart, energetic people at the top commanding machines and data speed ahead and the lazy, not-very-bright folks at the bottom fall further behind.

One thing seems to be left out of the discussion: those hyper-meritocrats are led by criminal morons.

Cowen’s embrace of Social Darwinism assumes that the winners have a selective advantage that arises from “merit” – which Cowen conflates with the ability to create wealth. This is passing strange as we are still suffering from an orgy of wealth destruction led by the “winners.” The people who grew wealthiest were often the people must responsible for the largest destruction of wealth in history. That it is an anti-meritocratic system. We do not live in a “winner-take-all” nation. We increasingly live in a “cheater-take-all” system.

AlterNet
America Has Become a "Cheater-Take-All" Nation
William K Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City

Les Leopold — Making a Million Bucks an Hour: How Hedge Funds Get Away With Siphoning Off America's Wealth

The following is an excerpt from Les Leopold's new book, How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth (Wiley Books, 2013)

What Bill Black has done for banking, Les Leopold does for hedge funds, showing how they create a criminogenic environment. This is a fascinating account of Jim Cramer's confessional and its implications.

And it makes one think what happens when crossing banks with hedge funds is permitted.

Good read.

AlterNet
Making a Million Bucks an Hour: How Hedge Funds Get Away With Siphoning Off America's Wealth
Les Leopold

Lynn Stuart Parramore — Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters

American business has always had cheaters and crooks, but today they are escaping prosecution and are incentivized to cheat more.

AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore
Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters
Lynn Stuart Parramore

(h/t John Zelnicker via email)

Harry Bradford — Cheaters Get 'High' From Breaking The Rules: Study

Why law, regulation PLUS oversight and accountability are required to address the free rider problem.

The Huffington Post
Cheaters Get 'High' From Breaking The Rules: Study
Harry Bradford

Chris Dillow — Changing banking culture

In banking, however, the culture that helps solve agency problems is lacking.

So, how to create it, given the obstacles I've described?
We could learn from pre-modern states. They imposed brutal punishments upon wrong-doers, in part because they needed to terrorize their subjects into submission simply because they had no other means of controlling them. Similarly, if shareholders or regulators cannot control bankers - and it looks like they can't, draconian punishments for wrongdoing are needed to keep them in line. As Voltaire nearly said, "it is wise to kill a banker from time to time to encourage the others."

Read it at Stumbling and Mumbling

Changing banking culture
by Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Whatever it takes, I guess. We lock up people for a long time for a lot less.