By 5 years into the financial markets boom of the 1980s, the broader cultural image of Wall Street was already the Gordon Gekko character. Whatever one thought about their economic productivity, no one thought that they *as people* were morally upright geniuses who were good candidates for being philosopher-kings leading us to the stars and the future, rebuilding moral philosophy, revitalizing politics.
The people who brought us Theranos, FTX, NuTwitter, and the Silicon Valley Bank, though...