Ending the Moral Rot on Wall Street, Part 1: William D. Cohan

Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- What will it take for Americans tofinally get the message that much of Wall Street, in its currentform, is a corrupt enterprise in need of a top-to-bottomoverhaul, a task that the year-old Dodd-Frank law, for all itsverbosity, barely attempts?

There is ample evidence in the detritus left behind by theebb tide of the worst financial crisis since the GreatDepression. There are the thorough -- and thoroughly damning --reports (along with thousands of pages of accompanying internalWall Street documents) produced by the Financial Crisis InquiryCommission and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee onInvestigations. More was exposed by Anton Valukas, the chairmanof the Chicago law firm Jenner & Block LLP, in his investigationof the accounting shenanigans engaged in by a handful of LehmanBrothers Holdings Inc.’s executives in the months leading up tothat firm’s spectacular bankruptcy in September 2008.