Note the word deceptive/deceive: "the financial industry was engaged in predatory lending practices, deceptive practices. They were optimizing not on producing mortgages that were good for the American families but in maximizing fees." Meanwhile, stock-based compensation created further skewed incentives by encouraging executives to pursue short-term stock gains at the expense of long-term corporate sustainablity, Stiglitz said, and in some cases encouraged them to deceive their own shareholders."

Thus making it fraud.

Now how many times are you going to reply to this comment without actually answering my question in response: Where in the article Stigletz wants to make a new category of behavior to punish? I don't see that anywhere in the article. Or did you just make that argument up and attribute it to him?

You pointed to:"What should be done? "I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L [crisis] and actually put many of these guys in prison," said Stiglitz." He's talking about sending people to prison.

Note the headline: Put Corporate Criminals in Jail

Keyword: crooks, not failures

Now I'm trying to assume you're not a troll, but my patience is wearing thin. You're making assumptions and misrepresenting Stigletz position, he never said we should punish failure, only punish crime--categorized by deceptive practices and deception--fraud.

Now please find some other comment to reply to if you can't even be bothered to argue against something in the article and instead choose to make up your own strawman argument for Stigletz, attribute that to him, and then argue against your own garbled argument. That's not his logic, that's yours.

You write:

"Note the headline: Put Corporate Criminals in Jail Keyword: crooks, not failures"

My friend, it is up to us (the public) to define what a criminal is. That's the whole point of this conversation. If you want to reason from the headline of the article then you are engaging in a bit of circular reasoning: the title of the article says these people are criminal, therefore the article must be correct, because criminals are bad.

I think you and I can agree that criminals are bad. The question is, what do we want to define as criminal behavior?