[jmcohen]

One reason why bankers might become more dishonest after being primed to think about their jobs is that being a good banker, like being a good used-car salesman, often requires dishonesty.

I’m thinking of a scene from the (non-fiction) book Liar’s Poker where an investment bank finds itself stuck holding a bunch of bonds whose value is rapidly declining. Does the firm swallow the loss? Of course not! Management tells the sales team that priority #1 is unloading the low-quality bonds onto the bank’s gullible customers at an inflated price.

Another example that might hit closer-to-home here is that of equities analysts on Wall Street during the .com bubble who became unreasonably bullish on certain tech companies in order to gin up IPO business for their firms’ profitable mergers/acquisitions divisions.

In banking, the interests of the firm and the customer are often misaligned, and, well, it’s not the customer who's going to pay the banker’s bonus.