N.Y. Fed Counsel Says Punish Bankers to Change Culture

Bank culture has gone awry as financiers focus on transactions instead of customers, and punishment is one way to fix it, according to a top official at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“There is a need for a cultural shift,” Thomas Baxter, the New York Fed’s general counsel, told bankers at an industry conference yesterday. “You need to focus on making examples of people, and nothing focuses the attention like a hanging. How are people promoted, how did those people get into those senior seats? This is another powerful way to send a message.”