This was the first chilling example as to how cyber terrorism could bring down the financial system, or specific institutions or persons. Obviously, new safeguards must be put in place by legitimate media brands, regulators, new media outlets like Twitter, markets, corporations and governments.

There is no one secret sauce for success on Wall Street. Let us say that there are several secret sauces. In the last 12 months, three young women ...

David McCullough Jr. recently gave a commencement address, in which he told the students the cold, hard reality that "none of you is special." Who is to blame for this? Maybe those very same parents and teachers who are so quick to accuse us of it. The baby boomers, with the best intentions, have made us into what we are today: a generation of spoiled individuals. Why are they surprised?

Perhaps if more insiders had come forward to expose wrongdoing, and irregularities at the major U.S. banks and investment houses a few years ago, the impact of the financial meltdown leading to the Great Recession might have been softened. Until each one of us does this, we're all muppets.

Clearly, Greg Smith is the very product of the environment he is so quick to criticize. Under the guise of a now viral op-ed piece in the New York Times, Smith -- once a Goldman Sachs executive -- has successfully guaranteed that every employer, every corporation, every Jack, and Jill around the world, including the Hill, will be aware of his accomplishments.

Occupy Wall Street is, like the Tea Party, a messy populist movement. The concern is real that it refuses to recognize an essential tragic component of human affairs: unfairness is the abiding fact of our condition

Brookfield Properties and the City Of New York have cancelled a clean-up of Zuccotti Park, the space currently being occupied by the Occupy Wall Stree...

Wall Street's problems are far too important a matter to be left in the hands of those who act and think with anger, rather than with sense. Promote those with knowledge to act as your leaders, keep them on the forefront of OWS and keep the "angry mobs" away from the cameras.

Amid the attention given to the entertainment celebrities operating as outsiders, there is a need also to see how a different type of celebrity from the world of business -- Bill Gates -- is acting as an insider in the campaign of change with respect to financial institutions at the hub of global governance.

Who is listening to the folks camping out in downtown Manhattan? President Obama should call out the root cause of his shortcomings at the polls, but is otherwise engaged in retaining Wall Street support for his re-election campaign. And what of us, informed and active, democracy-loving citizens?

From sex-abuse scandals within churches to the stupefying fiascoes on Wall Street and in the Gulf of Mexico, a general malaise has replaced our optimism. For academics concerned by the crisis of credibility in our political, economic, and social institutions, it is time to take a good look in the mirror.