Crossing the Ethical Rubicon

\ For Rajat Gupta former head of Mc Kinsey and board member of Goldman Sachs the dream run came to an end when the Jury found him guilty of insider trading. His dream was a marathon larger and longer than life in which he breasted what seemed like insurmountable odds in real life. His world of lucid dreams finally ended in a nightmare. Gupta’s is a fairy tale narrative, an orphan from a nondescript town in Calcutta who rose to the highest office by dint of hard work & intellect to garner a scholarship in Harvard. There was no looking back as he went on to occupy the corner office as the first Indian to head Mc Kinsey and company one of the top five consulting firms in the world. Dishonesty has today become a virtue and we tend to view corrupt and illegal behavior as the norm - in high finance and Wall Street-where insider trading secrets are exchanged like marbles and every one slips into illegality with nonchalance. In the aftermath of the inglorious deluge of scams initiated by Milken’s, unethical behavior is not linked to morality – but treated more as a function of the cost benefit ratio of doing business and everyone turns a Nelson’s eye to issues of ethics and mortality. The perverse goal of short term acquisition of wealth is the Holy Grail and is encouraged by all big firms like Lehman Brothers and it’s ilk. The Wall Street debacle showed us that scams, corruption and white collar crimes are all around us like an invisible shroud. Short terms gains, instant wealth and filthy lucre are the new buzz words and this gives rise to more and more crimes and corruption. Financial executives of publicity traded companies; along with bankers, fund managers and other investors with vested interests are the root cause of this “nightmare at wall street” – the fable, the philosophical dissertation of the cancerous malaise. Is it rational or irrational ethics? The guilty are not embarrassed as they consider it akin to listening to pirated music or illegal parking, as everyone does it. A star trader might transcend the prosaic legitimate business, but only a wily rogue trader can bring the coherence of vision that gives birth to great scams and billions of greenbacks – remember Rajaratnam and his Galleon funds? The apparent weakness in the regulatory system becomes the virtues of these wealth creators.