Have Financial Markets Polluted Our Moral Code?

Banking scandals have dominated the headlines this summer. Earlier this summer, the Libor scandal rocked banks across the pond and throughout the United States. In July, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused HSBC of severe regulatory failures, including laundering money for Mexican drug lords and bypassing American sanctions against Iran. Finally, this week, the British bank Standard Chartered agreed to a settlement of $340 million for secretly helping the Iranian government launder $250 billion.  These scandals and more led Jim Rogers, American investor and Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interest, to tell The Takeaway, "We’ve had a long bull market, but that’s finished. Finance is now going to be a terrible place to be." That may be good news for Michael Sandel, professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets." Sandel argues that market-driven thinking has corrupted our moral code — not just on Wall Street, but in our everyday lives.