Yeah, so I was at this really cool party, with all these very cool and accomplished people. One of them is a banker, a high-flier in the big-money, high-finance sector. She used to be a rock star, now she's a big-time banker, in a prestigious firm, traveling all over the world doing "banking things."
It's funny, she talked about her firm, and those who worked there, as if it were a quasi-corrupt entity. Sort of a mafia-like business, or maybe like a sophisticated narco-organization. And she talked about how it was a "soul-sucking" "spirit-killing" experience. And how she had to get out to save herself.
Of course, in the meantime, she makes big dollars, she lives in high style. She is accomplished, admired, one of the success stories. But she was horrified by the banking culture. How the corruption has been mainstreamed, how day to day business practices threaded their way around the laws. How good business practice has been discarded, how ethics is no longer even in the realm of thought.
This is an insider: a total indictment of the banking world. When even the bankers themselves recoil at their own actions, you think maybe we've reached some kind of point of no return. But maybe really this kind of mind-set has been so mainstreamed most of us don't even notice anymore. Business as usual!