Opinion: Greed & Wall Street - Lessons Learned & Opportunities Squandered

In early December 2013, Goldman Sachs' trader Matthew Taylor was sentenced to nine months in prison and forced to pay $118 million in restitution to his former employer after pleading guilty to wire fraud in pursuing an unauthorized $8.3 billion futures trade deal in 2007. Prosecutors also said that Taylor lied to his supervisors. 

U.S. District Judge William Pauley concluded that Taylor's case is a "paradigm of everything that is wrong with Wall Street and the regulators charged with protecting the public." While Pauley is categorically correct, and is a sensible judge who continues to preside over lower Manhattan trials involving white collar crimes, the simple truth is that greed phenomenon remains intact.

Too often idealistic businessmen and ethical entrepreneurs hear dire warnings like "you've got to be a vulture in order to survive," and "it's all just a jungle."

Rarely do they hear, "keep a good head, work hard and do the right thing." 

Corporate malfeasance, embezzlement and insider trading are more like headaches to corporations, which really should feel remourse. They do not treat these transgressions as epidemics, which must be cured. The very definition of embezzlement is "the act of wrongfully appropriating funds that have been entrusted into your care but which are owned by someone else."  

In other words, embezzlement is an act where someone deliberately sabotages the trust of another person.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, the sequel to the acclaimed 1987 film, Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) is released from prison after serving out his sentence for a host of white-collar crimes. Upon his release, Gekko looks to rehabilitate his career. After writing a memoir about his successful, albeit nefarious business dealings and practices on Wall Street, Gekko promotes his memoir through a series of talks to to young business upstarts.

Gekko's personality reflected that of many bigshots who during the 1980s lived lavishly, but maintained an absent moral compass where wealth, and greed become the bottom line.

"I used to say greed is good. Now it seems that it's legal because everyone's drinking the same Kool-Aid," he says with both a sense of sarcasm and truth. 

Just before his sentencing in December, a contrite Matthew Taylor told reporters that he and his wife have "tried to rebuild our lives far from Wall Street."  This suggests he is seeking to reform his life.

He should be given that chance. 

Taylor will spend much of 2014 behind bars to ponder the many "what ifs" while serving out his sentence.

Tags

Wall Street, White Collar Crime, Matthew Taylor, Securities and Exchange Commision

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