Steal and Lie to become wealthy! It works in America.

The people who grew wealthiest were often the people most responsible for the largest destruction of wealth in history.  That it is an anti-meritocratic system.  We do not live in a “winner-take-all” nation.  We increasingly live in a “cheater-take-all” system.

"The typical large failure [grew] at an extremely rapid rate, achieving high concentrations of assets in risky ventures…. [E]very accounting trick available was used…. Evidence of fraud was invariably present as was the ability of the operators to ‘milk’ the organization” (NCFIRRE 1993).  
The large Enron-era frauds were all accounting control frauds.

Cruise and Cowen simply assume that whoever can “earn millions” represents the “best” of Americans.  It can, but it can also represent the worst of us.  Finance has become dominated by the worst of us, which is why we have recurrent, intensifying financial crises driven by their fraud epidemics.  Cowen looks at the results of our hyper-anti-meritocracy system of finance, a gaudy whorehouse bedecked with red neon lights.  Cowen concedes in his book (though it does lead to any analytical inquiry) that finance executives are currently the largest winners in gaining wealth despite causing the massive loss of societal wealth in the ongoing crisis.  Without even discussing fraud or why the people who are the leading destroyers of wealth were the largest beneficiaries and experienced the greatest growth in wealth since 2009 Cowen describes finance as if it were a temple of meritocracy.  Cowen has demonstrated that when Akerlof and Romer said of economists – twenty years ago – that “now we know better” about fraud and financial crises they were far too optimistic about their profession.  

http://www.alternet.org/economy/fraud-and-american-economy?akid=11014.294211.MtSjfT&rd=1&src=newsletter905956&t=5