美国银行业乱象治理：只打苍蝇，不打老虎

    你工作努力，尽职尽责。如果上级指令看似有误，你就会想办法，看看怎样才能让自己的初步理解和老板的想法一致。你表达了自己的疑虑，但最终还是按吩咐去做了。你真的需要那份薪水，不是吗？

    当心。如今这样做可能让你遭到起诉，特别是在老板愿意丢卒保车、出面指证你的情况下。

    想想摩根大通（J.P. Morgan）和“伦敦鲸”：检方锁定的不是这家公司的首席执行官杰米•戴蒙，而是前员工哈维尔•马丁-阿塔霍和朱利安•格鲁。而在高盛（Goldman），遭到起诉的不是CEO劳埃德•布兰克费恩，也不是总裁加里•科恩，而是前交易员法布里斯•图尔。

    政府官员正在合力逆转普通员工的命运。上一个时代，检方的做法是通过小人物来钓大鱼。而现在，他们在媒体镜头前装腔作势地批评公司负责人，但最后却只对基层人员提起诉讼。

    这种做法给我们带来的是领导者失职所产生的双重打击。第一次打击来自那些愿意毁掉美国经济的银行高管，随后的打击则来自不能将他们绳之以法的监管部门。伴随而来的是什么呢？如今许多人已经不怎么信任政府。在这种情况下，这些高管和官员让他们的信心进一步遭到重创，而且他们干的相当漂亮。

    美国司法部长埃里克•霍尔德有一句名言，大型银行规模太大，不能进监狱。现在他让人们明白，普通人倒是可以进监狱的。但愿我们之前就清楚这一点。金融危机至今已有五个年头，没有哪怕一名高层人员遭到起诉。或许霍尔德的话是个警告，意思是说也许可以更多地抓些小鱼小虾。

    问题是，小人物们下一步会面临什么局面？由于涉嫌聘用中国官员的子女，美国政府已经开始调查摩根大通是否存在贿赂行为。我们是否可以认为，这家公司负责入职新员工文书工作的行政助理将承担这项罪名呢？最近，摩根大通还因涉嫌操纵能源价格而遭到调查，检察官普利特•巴拉拉会起诉基层的能源市场交易员吗？

    也许检察官们会把这些新把戏用到银行业以外。显然，如果安然（Eron）东窗事发时也流行这样做，首席执行官杰夫•斯基林和首席财务官安迪•法斯托就一定会欣喜不已。犯了刑事罪的企业高层可能很快也会得到同样的待遇。然后我们就可能看到检察官们骄傲地对人们说，他们是打击犯罪的高手，原因是他们让一名未遭羁押的贩毒集团首脑人物指证了几名街头小贩，现在后者将面临贩毒指控。

    无论情况变成什么样，它都有好的一面。如果检察官们积极地起诉像哈维尔、朱利安和法布里斯这样的人，为了规避风险，在公司负责人和自己持不同道德标准的情况下，普通员工在签署工作合同时就会三思而后行。我们发现，如果人们与公司的愿景不一致，或者大公司不善待利益相关者或破坏环境，人们为这些公司效力的意愿就会下降。

    You work hard. You do your job. You follow orders. If the directives seem wrong, you try to figure out how you can reconcile your initial impression with what your bosses want. You express skepticism, but ultimately you do what you're told. You do need your paycheck, don't you?

    Beware. These days, behaving that way could lead to your prosecution, especially when your boss is willing to throw you under the bus and testify against you.

    Think: J.P. Morgan (JPM) and the London Whale. It's not CEO Jamie Dimon who's catching the heat from prosecutors. It's former employees Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout. And at Goldman (GS), it wasn't CEO Lloyd Blankfein or President Gary Cohn. It was former trader Fabrice Tourre.

    Government officials are orchestrating a reversal of fortune for workers. In a previous era, prosecutors went to the little guys first to catch the big fish. But these days, prosecutors preen in front of the cameras to blame the head honchos while they lay out their cases against members of the rank and file.

    By their actions, we are experiencing the double slap of leadership failure. First, we take the hit from banking executives willing to blow up our economy – and then get the follow on sucker punch from regulators failing to hold them accountable. And what is accomplished? These executives and enforcers have managed, quite neatly, to eviscerate many people's already tattered trust in authority.

    U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is famous for saying that big banks are too big to jail, but he's now clarifying that individuals aren't. Wow, wish we'd known that before. It's been five years since the crisis with no prosecutions of high-level executives. Perhaps his statements are a warning shot: maybe more small guys will fry.

    The question for regular folk is what comes next? The U.S. has opened a bribery inquiry concerning J.P. Morgan's alleged hiring of the children of Chinese officials. Can we expect to see the administrative assistant responsible for new hire paperwork taking the fall? And in the latest probe of J.P. Morgan's energy manipulation, will U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara find a lowly energy trader to charge?

    Perhaps prosecutors will extend these new-fangled approaches beyond the banking sector. Certainly, CEO Jeff Skilling and CFO Andy Fastow would have been pleased if these were the prevalent practices when Enron met its demise. Maybe criminal enterprises will be getting the same treatment soon. Then we might witness prosecutors proudly informing us that they are great cops on the beat because they got a non-incarcerated drug kingpin to turn evidence on a couple of street sellers who've now been charged for selling dope.

    Wherever this leaves us, it may have an upside. If prosecutors aggressively pursue the Javiers, Juliens and Fabrices, risk-averse employees may think twice before signing on to work for organizations led by individuals who do not share their moral compass. We've already seen employees less willing to work for large companies that have missions they're opposed to, treat their stakeholders poorly, or harm the environment.