We all know what happens at the High School level of education. Kids cheat. They are growing and testing the boundaries of what they can get away with. Some of them do not get away with it; others never get caught. It is those who never get caught who are the ones to worry about.
Sometimes these cheaters climb to the very top, and since they lack a hierarchy of moral values, continue to do the sin they have learned to do so well. One of my personal favorite examples of dishonesty in the top tiers of our society is the Bank of America sandal of 2008-2009. As I am sure you all know and have experienced, there was a massive foreclosing of homes in the 2008 financial crisis. One of the driving factors of this crisis was the dishonesty in the Bank of America employees and staff.
The Bank of America would encourage their employees to foreclose homes. Often times, the employees were given a quota to foreclose per month. If they did not meet this quota, they were disciplined, sometimes even fired for their actions. If they met or exceeded their quota, they were given rewards, such as cash bonuses or gift cards. These sort of incentives lead to employees "never receiving paper work" or "not receiving your check" to cause homeowners to fall behind on their mortgage and eventually foreclose (good for the employee, bad for the family).
I define cheating as dishonesty, at the academic, emotional, or economic level. What the Bank of America staff did was cheating. They cheated their customers out of money, and out of their homes. A majority of the time, cheating is only at the expense of the one who commits it. They cheat on a test, don't learn the material, and fail when it comes to be finals. The sort of cheating caused by B of A is much worse. Their cheating is at others expense, and to an extent, at the expense of the nation.
Now that we have caught them red handed, what is there to do? Unfortunately, you can not call the principle and get them expelled. If you were to do away with B of A you would leave some 40 million Americans without a bank. You would also stop the massive cash flow from B of A that helps stimulate the economy.
The government decided to regulate. In 2009, the government passed the Home Affordable Modification Act, which helped homeowners renegotiate their mortgages and protect them from harm. However, there have already been 18,000 complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, another organization created by the government to regulate banks.
If regulation does not work, what is there to do next?
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