Supplements

Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Learning to Live by a Moral Compass

I heard a former investment firm employee talk on National Public Radio about what she did during the run up to the banking crisis — in other words, how she contributed to the problem although that’s not exactly what she said. A good deal of what she said was troubling, not the least of which was her youthful voice. The NPR piece focused on how investment bonds were rated with triple-A, the best.

Evidently, sometimes the folks giving the ratings were not altogether honest in how they assessed a bond’s worth. I can already hear you saying: “You’re kidding, dishonest people in the upper levels of the investment industry?” Well, maybe I can’t actually hear you saying that. Maybe it would be more like: “Right, and who could possibly be surprised about that?”

It brings back a particularly familiar theme, given that the young woman talking on the radio made a very telling statement: “I’m not proud of what I did, but I did it anyway.” At least she recognized she left her personal and professional ethics at the door when she walked into her office day in and day out. It used to be if someone did something that was unethical, that person’s conscience would go into overdrive until the wrong was righted or someone was told or, at the very least, sleep was lost, appetite diminished — something.

These days, so many times over the past 18 months we have been shocked or stunned by the banking industry’s less than stellar performance in the ethics department. Our reality checks have cost some folks parts or all of their pensions, their jobs, their homes and I don’t know what else. Wave upon wave of reality crashed around us, and at the center of this hurricane of default and closure was the complete disregard for honest and ethical behavior, along with greed. We’ve all heard this before, so why go back over this ancient and painful history?

I want to know what happened to the people who caused this meltdown, this disaster which has changed our lives forever — whether we recognize it or dig a deeper hole in the sand to bury our heads. The trickle-down effect of this economic disaster results in more social services needed with fewer dollars to provide them. Our parishes collect less money at weekend liturgies forcing them to look twice or three times maybe at the services they provide. The chilling possibilities of the numbers of people who will slip through the cracks in our networks of care and concern frighten many service providers.

Have the young and the thoughtless, the unscrupulous and the greedy learned a lesson? Do they care about those of us who continue to ride through this hurricane and deal with the tangible and intangible damage caused? I hope so. If folks who had no respect for the truth found their own moral compasses and followed them, that would be a start.