In his July 12 op-ed column, David Brooks of the New York Times referred to the culprits in the LIBOR scandal as “brats.” Brooks’s point was that these people had “no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role.” How true, how sad, and how typical. The LIBOR brats felt that they were just in a game, a game whose rules they could bend or break at will, as long as they weren’t caught. They had no respect for the institutions (or the people) they represented. They were only interested in personal gain. And gain they certainly did.
This seems so familiar; it is almost a mantra of the times. How often have we seen this behavior recently? And in how many different sectors? Finance? I give you the mortgage scandal, Enron, the investment bank collapse (Lehman Brothers et alia). I give you the George W. Bush administration. Talk about brats!
My favorite poster boy for all this--and there are several to choose from--is Donald Rumsfeld (some may prefer Rupert Murdoch. Fair enough).
Donald Rumsfeld. Not "the Donald," that's another brat, but “Rummy” to his friends. A rum deal for everyone else. This guy was a bully. The intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear program didn’t confirm the Bush administration’s rhetoric that the Saddam possessed WMDs by the trainload? Rummy ends it back to the intelligence analysts for “correction.” Trouble is, they were right the first time. Rumsfeld didn’t care. He and his protégé Dick Cheney, who happened to be Vice President, paid no heed to the responsibilities of their offices. They only wanted to win. Brats. Just like the LIBOR brats.
We know all this. The world has paid the price in money and in blood, but there is another cost to the brats’ behavior. Remember, the brats ran things. For a long time. They were in control of financial markets, governments, and armies. They ruined people and killed thousands of people, though indirectly. And they were in control of hiring and firing.
The brats have run things my whole adult life. There are many reasons for this, presumably. But let’s talk about the cost. Brats know it all. They are geniuses, experts, supermen. Not just in their own minds; the world has bought into this, too. The brats know the facts, the truth, and the path to the future. And God help you if you ever so much as said to they, “but.”
Anyone who dared to say, “What if . . .” or “the data don’t support this” or “I can’t prove this” was not well liked by the brats. Anyone who dared to contradict Rumsfeld (and there weren’t many, for good reason) found himself pushed aside, his career in a shambles. Same thing in the financial world. Try to tell the brats they can’t or even shouldn’t do what they know they can do. A prescription for personal disaster. Skeptics are shunned; people who respect rules are ridiculed. Employees who disagree are fired. The skeptics, those with standards, those who respect the institutions they are a part of, soon find themselves excluded. Kicked out. Forced to accept a dead-end job or find a different career. Most get laid off quickly for one reason or another. Some get escorted off the premises out of the blue by security guards (oh yes, that happens).
And their voices are silenced. Just when we need them most. Our business and political culture does not want to hear the word no. And those brave enough to utter it are branded pariahs and sent into exile. Yet it is the skeptics we need. We need the contrarians, those who look at a problem and don’t jump on the band wagon but say, “Wait a minute. Let’s think about this a bit.” We need these minds to protect us. They have been absent or unlistened-to and because of that we have experienced political and financial disasters almost without relief for a decade. (And it didn’t begin then.)
We have lost the skeptics. A whole generation of businessmen and politicians has ignored, shunned, sidelined, and fired them into virtual oblivion.

The brats. The old boys. The best and the brightest. The in crowd. The secret societies. The cliques. The President’s men. The big swinging dicks. All these guys are, despite their supposed intelligence, idiots. They leave destruction in their wakes and the rest of us have to pay for cleaning up their messes. Why do we fall for their nonsense? Who knows? But what we can do is value the skeptics. We need to promote them, vote for them, and listen to them. Those who say what nobody wants to hear. Because, as the last decide had proven over and over again, it is the skeptics who knew better.