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[…] Even if the lawsuit against the buyers fails, you need to remember that what`s legal isn`t always ethical. It is wrong to mislead consumers, even if it is legal. And the Rexall flyer is […] Bethany McLean: One of the concepts that has always interested me is what I have called legal fraud, the idea of things that are completely legal, but are still corrupt or not in the public interest. And I`d like you to tell us a little bit about that. What is the biggest problem for you – what is explicitly illegal, or what is perfectly legal but corrupt, immoral, secret, etc.? […] Our exploration of the relationship between ethics and law. (Two weeks ago, we discussed why what is legal is not always ethical; last week, we looked at why it can be difficult to follow the law and therefore sometimes break the law… So if you want to claim that what`s legal is also ethical, you have to bite a lot of bullets and accept as ethics a lot of behaviors that you probably don`t want to accept. At the event, held in person at the Gleacher Center for the first time in two years, Hoang and Weitzman discussed unethical corporate behavior and how companies could be pushed to improve. 03. It is illegal to cross a traffic light or speed, although it is ethical and legal if someone`s life depends on it. As if we had to take him quickly to the hospital. […] is not an acceptable substitute for ethical behaviour.

Just as legality is not the same as morality (seriously, it is not, the word is spreading), profit does not imply ethical superiority. Great, we all do […] 04. Smoking cigarettes in public is legal in some places, but some find it disrespectful and unethical. So there is a form of supervision, but it is completely insignificant, and that was quite worrying for me. If I mentioned to the legal experts, does it not sound like the fox guarding the chicken coop because these lawyers appear in court according to the rules that they have written themselves? I mean, talk about Stigler. This is the perfection of regulatory capture. It institutionalizes regulatory ownership. You control the whole process. You don`t even need to lobby anymore. They simply write the rules themselves, and then they argue under the rules they wrote themselves. It was quite shocking to me.

When I asked people, I got answers like, “Well, that`s very technical.” “It doesn`t take much imagination to see that these corporate structures can be used for nefarious purposes,” he added. “And, of course, they have all the legal protection of the United States.” And it`s true, most of my daily decisions are choices between good options and focusing on how to create a better world for everyone. But recently, a client asked me to give someone an unfair advantage on a project. I refused and told him that what he was asking was unethical. 04. It may be illegal not to perform a contract, but it can be ethical for a number of logical reasons. If you go to your bank and put $100 in a savings account, you`ll be lucky if the bank pays you 1% interest for a year. If you buy a bank-sponsored credit card, the bank will charge you 25% or more. Now, what`s wrong with this image? According to the banks, nothing at all.

All of this is completely legal. A culture of impunity arises when those in power break the law, evade social or legal sanctions, and then continue to break the law. Impunity allows those in power to get away with it – breaking existing laws, but also exploiting loopholes. In 2010-2013, employees of the New India Assurance Company Mumbai deliberately misinterpreted the opinions of the Central Information Commission (with copies to complainants, e.g. the complainant) in order to participate in a video conference. The complainant witnessed a systematic loss of public funds of approximately Rs. 10000/- to 25000/- per person to request a habitual and unsolicited visit to Delhi to divert public funds. Based on Blodgett`s recommendations, Merrill Lynch`s brokers actively sold these “rotten” shares to investors. Client portfolios suffered heavy losses due to the collapse in technology stocks. Blodgett`s actions, while highly unethical, were still legal.

As a result, he was banned from the industry, not because he was promoting stocks he didn`t like, but because the companies he promoted were clients of Merrill Lynch`s investment bank, creating a conflict of interest. Today, investors trust Wall Street analysts a little less than they did before the Blodgett fiasco. Sewage and oil and gas earthquakes are a good example. Sewage injection is legal, but if it is related to earthquakes, this remains to be determined; Is it ethical? Some elements to consider are that when correlating wastewater injection or removal and earthquakes, the methodology creates a model and methodology to understand why, how and to what extent wastewater injection induced seismicity or earthquakes. To start this model, you need to collect data on the number of barrels injecting wastewater into drain wells in the U.S. or even by region, and compare it to seismic activity over time. It would make a beautiful picture. Some additional considerations for the model methodology are to take the volume of liquid injected into the discharge wells and try to correlate the proximity of these removal wells with the epicenter of the seismic event or earthquake. The next step would be the overlay of geological maps of fractures and faults. This would provide data on the proximity of the epicentre to known fractures or faults, provide a possible correlation between the volume injected into the discharge wells and the epicentres, possibly begin to define a radius of induced seismicity and place parameters around areas of interest that may be very sensitive to the injection of disposal wells, as opposed to areas, which are less sensitive or even advantageous for such an injection. Building a data-driven model, rather than seeing a trend and making assumptions, seems to be the best approach. I can assure you that oil and gas operators are just as interested in this data as the general public and academics, if not more so.

Rest assured that state regulators are closely monitoring correlations and data from the academic community. In fact, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission has already introduced regulations for injection drilling. If it is determined that the disposal of oil and gas wastewater is directly linked to earthquakes, the oil and gas industry and our country will face very difficult choices.