• Virtue may be its own reward, but there are other rewards that flow from it as well.  Virtue in the marketplace should be encouraged and applauded, not mocked and ridiculed.

• Honesty, accountability, and transparency are essential to the survival of free markets.  Unless those virtues undergird the markets, they will collapse under the weight of greed, avarice, and deceit.

• Men are not angels (as James Madison rightly observed).  Therefore, government has an obligation to ensure honesty, transparency, and accountability in the marketplace.  Reasonable regulations in pursuit of such virtues should be welcomed by reasonable people from all quarters of the market.

• Material misrepresentations about one's products or services or financial condition constitute fraud and should not be tolerated.  Perpetrators of fraud should be prosecuted by government.

• Victims of fraud and deceit should be permitted to pursue remedies aimed at recovering the full measure of their damages along with other remedies designed to punish wrongdoers and to deter a repetition of such misconduct in the future.  Even at its best, government is inadequate to protect consumers and investors.  Innocent victims should always be afforded a remedy for their loss.

In the aftermath of the market meltdown, morality and ethics may well make a comeback.  Hopefully, people will soon come to realize that virtue is never out of fashion.  If they don't, we will undoubtedly have more rocky times ahead.

The financial world needs to return to honesty, transparency, and accountability in its dealings.  Unrestrained greed, ambition, and immediate gratification will only lead to more crises like the current sub-prime mess.  Our government must live up to its responsibility to hold criminals accountable for their crimes, and we need to relearn the responsible thrift of our forebears who learned this same lesson after the Great Depression.  That calamity taught them the importance of saving and the danger of living on credit.  If we do not learn that same lesson now, we will learn it the hard way in the future.