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Technology & Innovation

Banking and Looting

Plenty of people on Wall Street knew that a crash was coming—and that they responded by grabbing all the profit they could, writes Christopher Hayes. He thinks they should face criminal sanctions.

The earliest chronicles of the recent financial meltdown “tended to portray it as a tale of groupthink and mania, of hubris and shortsightedness: all these smart people got it wrong!” Christopher Hayes writes that while that is true of many, it’s also clear that plenty of people on Wall Street knew that a crash was coming—and that they responded by grabbing all the profit they could. Hayes thinks there ought to be serious criminal consequences for this looting.


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