All is fair in love and reform
After 10 hours and 43 minutes of testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the witnesses -- a handful of hapless Goldman Sachs employees -- and the interrogators -- a handful of angry senators -- seemed no closer to a warm handshake and a promise to keep in touch. "I firmly believe that my conduct was correct," said a tired-looking Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman employee who structured the now-infamous Abacus trade.</br></br>The problem for Tourre -- and Wall Street -- is that they're so intent on proving that what they did was legal that they can't see that what they did was wrong. These are men (and they mostly are men) of the market, and they played by the market's rules: Make as much money as you can without going to jail. This is a world in which people are applauded for "blowing up the customer" -- that is to say, offloading a crappy product on a dim investor.</br></br>But it's not the world the rest of us live in. And if Wall Street doesn't realize that quickly, financial regulation might turn out very badly for the banks.</br></br>During the 1980s and 1990s, a variety of economists in a variety of countries conducted a series of experiments that shocked their profession. The experiments were called "ultimatum bargaining games," and they were very simple: A participant was given a pot of money to divide between himself and one other person. The player on the other side of the table could see all the action and could accept or reject the deal. But here was the catch: If the second person rejected the deal, neither party got any money.</br></br>Market man -- and his bible, textbook economics -- would've thought this easy: The second person would take any deal that's offered. After all, even a little bit of free money is better than no free money. But that's not how it worked out. When the second person was offered less than 30 percent, he generally blew up the deal. This was true across countries, age groups and even dollar amounts.