Welcome to the White Collar Club.
Financial institutions became a lightning rod for public animus and disdain amid the 2008 meltdown. Many people, from regulators to over-leveraged home buyers, were guilty in the run-up to the collapse of the housing and financial sectors, but Wall Street firms – insulated by golden parachutes and moral hazard – became easy scapegoats to an American public suffering from the recession. As shady and at times illegal banking practices have been revealed in succeeding years, intrigue has endured. The Occupy Wall Street movement only intensified the public’s awareness and wariness of the high finance industry, and revelations of financial malfeasance or comeuppance are greeted with widespread schadenfreude.
But many white-collar lawsuits and criminal indictments go unnoticed by the general public, which lacks a nuanced understanding of the financial world and is apt to miss stories overshadowed by inflated political narratives and news. Being over-charged for ATM fees isn’t too difficult to understand, but what about the effects of London inter-bank rate-fixing scandal? Or the seafaring, British JPMorgan trader that helped incur billions of dollars in losses and could face prison time?
Thankfully, a slew of talented journalists are keeping a steady eye on the vast industry, dutifully reporting the latest insider trading convictions, allegations of securities fraud and banking lawsuit settlements. High-powered and well-funded news operations boast stables of talented journalists worth keeping track of, like the New York Times’ Gretchen Morgenson and Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil. But younger journalists at smaller operations are also holding the industry accountable, like American Banker’s Jeff Horwitz. And of course, when bigger stories with broader political and policy implications break, the general news sites, TV talking heads and opinion blogs jump into the fray as well. I aim to curate the best (and worst) of the reporting and opinionating out there, and then try to make some sense of it myself.