Wall Street’s Economic Crimes Against Humanity
By refusing to consider the consequences of their actions, those who created the financial crisis exemplify the banality of evil
Shoshana Zuboff begins her article by stating that “financiers at AIG were awarded millions in bonuses because their contracts were based on the transactions they completed, not the consequences of those transactions.” These consequences are specifically related to the economic crisis, which some believe was caused by workers of AIG. Shoshana also takes this view and develops the whole article into a comparison between people working on Wall Street and their impact on the start of the economic crisis and a Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann who committed crimes with ever realizing that what he was doing was wrong. In this way she explains to the reader that financial institutions “accepted a reckless system that rewards transactions but rejects responsibility for the consequences of those transactions.”
The main ethical issue she deals with is that workers did not consider whether their actions would lead to good or bad outcomes, but only were concerned about doing their job. In this case this led to misery on a global scale.