Mercury News: Judge to bubble investors: Tough luck. A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by investors trying to blame Wall Street brokerage firms for their Internet-era stock losses, saying the investors knew full well the stock market was a “freewheeling casino.”
There’s some logic in this ruling, but only some. It says that Wall Street is basically free to lie to investors, because investors should know better than to trust anything Wall Street says.
OK. Investors did get greedy during the bubble. They bought uncritically and, in some cases, without doing any homework.
But I don’t see how that lets Merrill Lynch and other investment banks off the hook for their sleaze during this period. The victims may have brought some of this on themselves, but the judge is wrong to suggest that investor greed excuses Wall Street wrongdoing.
We don’t let con men go free just because their victims were stupid. Or do we?