This study will present an investigation of ethics on Wall Street, focusing on the decidedly unethical behavior involved in cases featuring the Salomon Brothers, Michael Milken, and Ivan Boesky.
The first basic question which must be asked has to do with the special circumstances of Wall Street: Is Wall Street so different from other areas of American capitalist enterprise? Is not corruption as much a part of every other facet of American business activities as it is a part of Wall Street? The answers to these questions might have some light shed on them by referring to a famous bank robber who was asked why he robbed banks. He said he robbed banks because that was where the money was. The same can be said of Wall Street --- it is an especially corrupt realm because there is so much money there. The men and women who operate on Wall Street are not necessarily more corrupt than men and women working in other realms, but the presence of incredible amounts of money, and the possibility of making fortunes in a relatively brief time create temptations which are greater than exist in perhaps any other area of American capitalist activity.
The risks and temptations which lead to unethical behavior on Wall Street, says Stone, are intensified by the speed of transactions and by the desire for big profits as quickly as possible. As Stone writes, "The most bizarre aspect of Wall Street is that it has managed to attract the best and the brightest to the challenge and then forced them to play under a set of conditions that almost guarantees lousy results . . . . The problem begins with the priority: To make money. No problem yet; certainly, no surprise. The folks who give the advice and manage the money, however, have created the problem by adding one requirement: They want to make money quickly. This little addition to the priority has managed to muck up the process" (Stone, 1990, p. 70).
The speed of transactions and the mas...