Gladwell had a piece a while back in the New Yorker about Enron, the huge US energy company which went catastrophically bust a few years ago. He raised a partial defence of the company's practices (or malpractices given many of the high-ups are in jail for long periods).

His comments shed light on matters of corporate deviancy. He pointed out that the Enron fraudsters were hammered for deceit. It was said that they had deliberately hidden the true picture of their company's financial reality and thus deceived all who were associated with them. Gladwell argues that it was the extreme complexity of the “instruments” they used in their business activities that was the problem. The information associated with these activities was widely available and was actually made available to anyone who asked. But no one who did the asking could understand the complexity. It was easier to simplify, misunderstand and pass a damning judgement than wade through the difficult detail to arrive at an analysis. The detail of their business structure was so opaque that it was virtually meaningless to the uninitiated - i.e. everyone, even the Enron executives themselves.

Interestingly this is similar to what has happened with the bankers. They created impossibly complex instruments that effectively lead to massive collapses and the destabilising of the economy, the overall outcome actually much worse than the bankruptcy of one company, albeit a big one. The bankers pocketed the proceeds from this folly but so far they have escaped jail. None of them have even stepped forward to explain, to apologise or even show contrition for the almighty mess they have made.

In my view the wider corporate culture over the last two decades has gone seriously astray. Banking has behaved as part of that monster. Yet when fingers are pointed at corporate heads and they are exposed to the full force of the law, the same does not apply to the bankers who are just as culpable. Jail the business-men but let the bankers walk away with the money? There is an inconsistency here worth pointing out.