Sep 29, 2008

The Roost is filling up


A recent article on the Risk and Governance Blog of the Risk Metrics Group discusses another aspect of the Wall Street mess:  The surge in class-action lawsuits.  These aren't the "knew or ought to have known" kinds of injuries, many are over disclosure or lack thereof: mis-statements or omissions in financial statements; leaking insider information, and "breaking the buck" on money markets.

None of this seems unusual in the litigious world we're shuffling through.  The next act I suppose will be for the class action firms to wind up, generating print and television spots that troll for customers  "injured" by financial entities of all sort.

While I'm certain that some players do deserve a wack upside the head, civilly and criminally, I'm equally certain that the larger result will be the creation of a new trough in which the lesser lights of the legal profession will feed.

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