On the surface, our globally interconnected marketplace is a great opportunity to exchange products, ideas, and services across continents and industries. However, we have yet to fully interpret the degree of uncertainty, and therefore risk, which is accompanying this global phenomenon. Because there are no established global norms and standards for operating in highly industrialized as well as emerging markets simultaneously, the rules of the game are uneven, unfair, and sometimes unethical. On the one hand, you have countries that customarily subsidize certain industries and accept bribes, and on the other, there are countries which routinely operate with conflicts of interest because they mix public policymaking with private sector interests. These kinds of cultural and political idiosyncrasies make for a real hodge-podge across nations and cultures.

The realities of the global marketplace are forcing all of us to evaluate whether or how much global companies and financial institutions should be socially or ethically responsible for the practices they engage in. The primary focus of most private companies is financial, i.e. profit maximization; however, a good majority of them also hold themselves socially accountable to their internal and external constituencies. The continual evolution of the global free market should self-determine whether companies will gradually respond to a pull to be financially and socially responsible corporate citizens.
 
The popular reaction, here at home, has been to try and reign in the greed that is rampant on Wall Street, by capping executive compensation and ramping up government regulation of the financial industry. Improving standards for transparency and accountability for Wall Street firms may assuage the fears and hopes of some, but this won’t change human behavior which is rooted in taking and managing all kinds of risk. Policymakers and taxpayers can slow down the perceived fraud, greed, and abuse in the high finance world by not using the services of the investment banks, not patronizing their corporate and institutional clients, and not incurring so much consumer debt. This will dry up that money train quicker than any new government regulation.

Realistically speaking though, our lives and interests are inextricably linked to the products and services that are the result of much of the Wall Street wheeling and dealing—cars, food, travel, homes, electronics, retirement savings, and investments -- you name it, investment bankers finance it somewhere along the way. Policymakers need to resist their knee jerk reaction to always over-legislate or increase regulation when there’s uncertainty, because ultimately, unbridled or inordinate regulation negatively impacts market competitiveness for American firms and industries, at home and abroad, in terms of job creation, implementation costs, and costs to the consumer. Instead, what we need are regulators, policymakers, financiers, and global companies that are committed to interpreting the global market complexities in new and creative ways that produce financially, socially, and ethically responsible global corporate enterprises.