Letters to the Editor
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I don't think so
The last crew I want confronting the complexities of modern life is the government which has proven over and over again that it is not only incompetent but also rigid in their incompetency. I'll certainly agree that greed played a role in the meltdown but it was not the only element and most of the greed wasn't on Wall Street, it was on Main Street where unscrupulous mortgage brokers suckered unsuspecting people into patently-going-to-fail mortgage arrangements that they then sold to Wall Street. So why is Wall Street so focused on short term results? I'll give you a hint: as with just about everything, it has to do with incentives and disincentives.
But your article was about overly optimistic executives. Executives aren't paid the big bux to be either pessimistic or optimistic. They're paid to be able to identify and react to strategic threats and opportunities confronting their companies. In an era when chief executives are oversexed, overpaid, and over here, they have pretty consistently been doing a piss poor job of executing their fundamental responsibilities. There's a reason for that, too. When you can cost your shareholders and companies around the world billions and billions of dollars and get fired with a multimillion dollar severance package, where are the wages of sin?