Salacious Emails Beg the Question, “What Were They Thinking?”
Posted on July 14, 2010
The disgrace of Wall Street is no secret, but seeing some of the blatant wrongdoing in writing really packs a wallop! The latest slew of inappropriate emails and IMs has recently gone public, and they are sure to leave you shaking your head.
Here are some of the highlights:
- “Unfortunately it’s screw the shareholders.”
- “No trail.”
- “The subprime market looks pretty damn ugly.”
- “You haven’t said anything about our trades? If so, I’ll smash your face in”
- “Only potential survivor ... standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”
You have to ask where their compliance folks fall in all of this. Weren’t they monitoring these communications? What kind of archiving solution were they using?
I can’t help but wonder if some of these guys will ever learn. I think it’s safe to say they won’t be working on Wall Street again anytime soon.
July 20th, 2010 - 09:12
Do you think that people make these sorts of comments because they don’t realize the implications of email storage technology at this point? I feel as though there is a still a general disconnect with people not understanding that things they do online can always be logged.
July 20th, 2010 - 10:12
Absolutely! But people should know better in this day and age, especially in financial services. The strict regulations these guys violated are nothing new. Everything is trackable, and if you’re not playing by the rules, it will very likely come back to bite you.