Keep a weather eye open.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Wrongdoings in the workplace - Brief article

Back to our friends on Wall Street. Here are the results of a survey reported by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the Times in which 250 insiders from dozens of financial companies evaluated their own morality: 23 percent said they had "observed, or had firsthand knowledge of wrong doing in the workplace," and 24 percent said they would "engage in insider trading to make $10 million if they could get away with it." And 26 percent "believed the compensation plans or bonus structures in place at their companies incentivize employees to compromise ethical standards or violate the law."

The key phrase in all this seems to me to be "if they can get away with it." The only way to keep Wall Street--and, for that matter, other institutions, like unions, universities, and the government itself--on the straight and narrow is to let the people in them know we're keeping an eye on them, and that the chances they'll "get away" with malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance are slim enough to keep them from trying.

At the same time, it's...