Not
according to the NYT and the academics they checked
with:
"It is exaggerated to say that there is much more corporate malfeasance than in the past," said Luigi Zingales, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. "Malfeasance is just more likely to be revealed in recessions." ...
"Prosecutors are going after white-collar crime with an eagerness we hadn't seen before," said James D. Cox, a professor of law at Duke University. "The state attorneys general realized that the governor-in-waiting, otherwise known as the attorney general, can get a lot of headlines." ...
Perhaps more important, though, prosperity promotes tolerance for deception. "In a bubble, people want to be lied to," said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School. "It was more than a conflict of interest - securities analysts boosted stocks because people wanted them to."Sounds right to me.
