The financial crisis that peaked in the United States during
the fall of 2008 is an excellent case study of what can go wrong with leadership
and corporate governance in business, financial ethics, government regulation
directed both to the firm level and that of the financial system itself, and
legal accountability for the culprits. The collection of essays begins with a
series of essays on Lehman Brothers, with particular attention on its last CEO,
Richard Fuld. Given the fraud surrounding subprime-mortgage bonds at numerous
banks, the second part of the book looks at why legal accountability was so
elusive in the United States. Weaknesses in the financial regulation, with
particular attention to whether agencies had been captured by their respective
regulated firms, comprises the third part. The fourth part examines the
culpability of the Federal Reserve Bank, which had perhaps been too close to
its regulated banks to anticipate the crisis. The book concludes with essays on
why business ethics had been so very weak. The careful reader will take from
the book a sense that the financial system remained vulnerable even after
government attempts to reduce the systemic risks of a big bank going under.
The book: Essays on the Financial Crisis, is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.
