Wall Street Scandals: The Myth of Individual Greed1

Abstract

There is rarely an introductory text in sociology that does not begin with C. Wright Mills’s (1967)distinction between personal troubles and structural or public issues. To lack sociological imagination is to confuse between these two levels of analysis in trying to explain public issues in terms of personal troubles, or history in terms of the individual’s biography. “Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others; Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life” (Mills, 1967:8). Issues are generated in response to the dynamics of the social system and unfold within the larger structural and historical contexts where the character of the individual takes shape. Yet, the most popular explanation of the contemporary financial crisis with its disastrous social and economic consequences is personal greed. It is the greedy investment bankers, corrupt politicians, and unscrupulous lobbyists who are to take the brunt of the current economic meltdown in the United States. A few bad apples on Wall Street have created havoc on Main Street. Here, one may argue that greed that—if not kept in check—which seems to afflict almost everyone, transcending social class and status boundaries, may be a public issue—a structural problem—rather than a problem within the character of the individual. Not to be greedy within the contemporary social and economic system may be considered pathological, an instance of personal trouble.