Dynamics Behind the ‘Moral Corruption’ of the Financial System

Abstract

The first phase of transformation of the world economic system was realized at the beginning of the 1980s. These were years in which neo-liberalist politics had been widening all over the world due to the Washington Consensus. Decreasing role of government as one of the most important principle of Consensus played a very important role to establish the New World Order. The New World Order as a system of global governance that institutionalizes cooperation (Slaughter in A new world order, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p. 15, 2004). The decreasing role of government means decreasing the effect of ‘wealth government.’ Privatizations increased at high rate particularly in the Post Cold War era. The New World Order required the transformation of society. This transformation of society was realized from year to year since the 1980s. In the Post Cold War era, there had been change in paradigms in terms of political as well as change in the structure of production. This era can be assumed to be the second phase of transformation. In the 1990s, some big financial firms which were assumed to be free from the problem of liquidation (banktrupcy), went bankcrupt. The moral erosion of the financial system became evident. The mechanism behind the moral erosion was versatile. The components of the balance sheet and delibrate disinformation to increase the value of firms and consequently shareholder value were part of the problem. In the second part, auditing firms which approved the finaancial statements were vigorously scrutinized. And the most important part was the mechanism which allows and/or directs CEOs and executives to act in such a corrupt and irresponsible way.