Joe Nocera

In a piece called "Wall Street: Not Guilty," financial columnist Roger Lowenstein attempts to defend Wall Street against allegations that it's a viper's nest of rampant criminality. His mischaracterization, mockery, and vague suggestions of McCarthyism are strident, flat, and fail to get the job done. But Lowenstein's piece is well worth reading, if only as a case study in the moral and cognitive blindness that's reached epidemic proportions in influential Washington and Wall Street circles.

Lowenstein shows us how people who are undoubtedly thoughtful and ethically-minded in their personal lives can lose their way when confronted with complex moral and legal issues, especially ones involving people they know personally. And his misdirection and vituperation suggests how unsettled they become when their worldview is challenged.

It's a shame. The analytical and moral flaws in Lowenstein's piece obscure some of the very sound points he makes about the wrongheadedness of our country's financial culture, a topic that deserves more thoughtful discussion. Without a clear rebuttal, this wrongheaded view is likely to become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

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The bankers are endangering innocent people, their pals are roughing up the law, and the people who should be helping out are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing You can almost hear Tex Ritter singing "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin'," the theme song from High Noon.

You remember High Noon. That's the movie where Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a retired gunslinger who can't find anybody to help him defend the town from a dangerous gang. In fact, the townspeople give him almost as much trouble as the gang does.

The financial system has its own sheriffs, and bankers behaved like an unruly mob with one of them this week. Meanwhile Democrats were characteristically diffident and Republicans formed a stone-throwing mob of their own.

Red Lights Everywhere

The lawmen - both women, in this case - were being baited, taunted, and thwarted at a time when the economy's dashboard is flashing red with warning signs. A lot of people think Wall Street banks are healthy again because it's making a lot of money. But they were making lots of money right before the last crash, too.

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