This will start my "Fun with Henwood" series.  Doug Henwood wrote a book called "Wall Street" back in 1997.  I discovered it while reading Nomi Prins' "Other People's Money".  She called his book "visionary" and it was in its prediction of bad times from bad behavior.  It is also written from a very left point of view and so has a direct, shooting straight from the hip, irreverent, and humorous style.  (He calls Greenspan's writings in the Ayn Rand "Objectivist" newsletter, "demented jottings".)
In the chapter on Market Models, Henwood explains modern economic theory and its belief in the purity and perfection of the market.  These words like pure and perfect make the market sound like some kind of temple with the high priests of finance ritualistically washing their hands and waving incense bombs.  Ironically with all this purity, Henwood points out that there is a very crude side to the players on Wall Street.  He says "Despite their reputation for sophistication most Wall Streeters hold a raw selfish view of the world."

Henwood writes that in the last half of the 20th century, the study of economics began to isolate the student in a tiny world of mathematics and market models in figuring out consumption without exploring the world of production, anthropology, or psychology.  And "it seems to make you a nastier person".  In a study by Frank, Gilovich, and Regan in 1993, "students grow less honest--expressing less of a tendency, for example to return lost money--after studying economics, but not after studying a control subject like astronomy."  Henwood says this study also found that "economists also are less generous than other academics in charitable contributions."  Undergrad econ majors "are more likely to defect in the classic prisoner's dilemma game than are other majors."
 
Henwood continues. "This is no surprise, really.  Mainstream economics is built entirely on a notion of self-interested individuals, rational self-maximizers who can order their wants and spend accordingly.  There's little room for sentiment, uncertainty, selflessness, and social institutions.  Whether this is an accurate picture of the average human is open to question, but there's no question that capitalism as a system and economics as a discipline both reward people who conform to the model."  (In his footnotes at the end of the chapter, he knows that you can "get carried away naturalizing temperaments and values", but there must be some reason why there are far less women and African Americans on Wall Street with its "chilly irreality".)
 
There are some socially conscious economics people around, but they have been marginalized.  Stephen Zarlenga of The American Monetary Institute went to the U of Chicago before, as he says, "they turned to the dark side."  There was a Chicago Plan that was formed in the 1930s based on putting the power of money into the hands of the people.  It believed that an economic system was put in place for the well being of the populace.  But it got lost and shunted aside when Hayek and Friedman built up their new repackaged feudalism (might makes right) model.  http://www.monetary.org/briefusmonetaryhistory.htm

My Dad used to say "the fish stinks from the head".  For too long we have been rewarding nasty brutish behavior on Wall Street and in Washington.  We allowed torture of prisoners and we allowed economic genocide to occur all over the world in the name of the "free market".  To say that we are innocent bystanders in the exploitation of farmers and laborers from the Congo to Colombia, is pretty much a big fat lie.
 
Piles of cash has become our golden idol.  I had a Friedmanite tell me last week that he was a risk-taking entrepreneur in the oil and gas business.  He has many teachers in his family and hopes to one day teach after he's made his pile of dough.  When I said that I felt teachers should make at least $100,000 a year, he said that was ridiculous because they don't have to take risks like he does.  I replied that it is very risky to be in charge of the future of America i.e. to be responsible for our children.  What if you fail to teach them ethics?  Or their place in American history?  Or how to think for themselves?  Or how to interpret Shakespeare?  What if you turn out a bunch of selfish indoctrinated drones who prey on their friends and neighbors?

"Risk is about borrowing money and creating a business, " he said.

"I guess we are just going to have to disagree on what should be rewarded and what shouldn't be.  And what we all should share and what we own privately.  Guess we are going to have to disagree on the risk of irresponsible behavior on the rest of us. " I purred.  "Economics used to be about more than numbers and models.  It used to be about class, power, institutions and a vision of how the world should be."

I was channeling Doug Henwood.