Dehumanizing slang for clients enables routine exploitation within trading firms

Evidence

In an act considered traitorous in the industry, Gregory Smith (2012), an executive at Goldman Sachs, went public in criticizing the firm’s ethos of exploiting its clients to increase corporate profits. In addition to documenting these exploitive practices, he described traders disparaging their clients as “muppets” (British slang for a stupid person who is easily manipulated) and talking about “ripping eyeballs out,” and analysts of derivatives asking, “How much money did we make off the client?” Smith resigned from the firm when he could “no longer in good conscience” compromise his values. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1513

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1513