Wonder Boy: Barry Minkow, the Kid Who Swindled Wall Street

pp. 183 - 184

In the 1980s people elevated money-making “to the level of a sacrament . . . the economists extended their hegemony far beyond the narrow realm of dollars and cents to claim dominion over political science, ethics, and philosophy, much as theologians ruled the intellectual roost in the MA. People in casual conversation talked about market solutions to problems in their love lives. . . . a sense of entitlement was in the land. People were no longer abashed about things. Hypocrisy itself had come to seem archaic. Guilt–healthy, civilizing, ennobling guilt–was out, yet our sheer grasping selfishness didn’t interfere at all with our obsessive need to feel wholesome, to love ourselves. Echoing across the decade were the words of Ivan Boesky, that consummate crook, who proclaimed, ‘Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.’”