The idea that business is or should be amoral is wrong. Business, and corporations in particular, exist and have the leeway they do because it is generally believed the good outweighs the bad, on the balance. By saying "we have no reason to have any scruples" you are veering into "no longer beneficial to society on the whole" territory. While I believe there is definitely value provided by finance (duh), some things they engage in clearly are self serving and detrimental to an orderly society. Bundling toxic mortgages and selling them to people under the guise "if they're stupid enough to buy them then it's their own fault" is wrong really no matter how much one waves his hands, yells "capitalism" and tries to act like they are doing it for some legitimate reason.
I don't think business should be amoral but I think it is. Businesses can do great things, help charities, help their employees, reduce carbon footprints - but anytime they do any of these things they squeeze all the good press they can out of it i.e. turn it into free positive advertising.
When times are tight those are the things that businesses cut first because they are concerned solely with money. I agree with you the toxic mortgages were an appalling thing to offer people who don't understand about, say, the effects of potential raised interest rates and how that might affect them. But that's why I say businesses (all businesses) are amoral - they don't care. So if we spot a bad business practice, like the toxic mortgages, we have to understand that we're going to have to rely on either the government or ourselves as consumers to fix it because business won't stop themselves from trying to make that buck.
I'm not saying I like this being the case but that how I see it.
The profitability of unsound lending is mainly an artifact of fairly recent policy. Historically, if you were to give out loans that you knew could not be paid, you would lose money. That does not seem to be the case any more.
If you were at a casino and wanted to make money, you might go count cards at blackjack or try to beat the other gamblers at poker. But, if you knew that the casino would fully reimburse you any losses, you would probably just sit down at a roulette table and bet the house on double zero. This may or may not be an evil thing to do, but certainly it is a rational thing to do. If millions of Americans are harmed as a result of your policy of consistently betting the house on double zero, perhaps they should take it up with the casino who encourages this behavior by consistently compensating you for your losses using money taken from the pockets of millions of Americans.
