Insiders dismissed the bad-apples excuse as covering pervasive Wall Street corruption

Evidence

In response to the Boesky case, some young traders shifted the blame to isolated “bad apples.” “It’s like knowing someone with cancer. You feel it for awhile. But say to yourself, ‘Hey, it’s not me,’ and you go on” (Martz, Powell, McCormick, Thomas, & Starr, 1986). Given the excesses on Wall Street, some of the elders in the business viewed the blurring of the line between right and wrong as pervasive. As one of the elders put it, “The ‘bad apples’ speeches are crap.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1431

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘moral disengagement’ mechanism of displacement of blame onto a few bad apples versus systemic corruption — echoes the ‘systemic vs individual’ responsibility debate familiar from organizational ethics literature. — connects to: Even prominent crisis commentators had undisclosed financial conflicts of interest — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 2351