There are people that want to argue there isn't anything at all wrong with sticking other people with your debts, defaulting on your agreements and, generally, doing whatever would profit you most and if you screw someone else in the process, that's just how business goes.
Okay, and....?
You can't use this site as a proxy for "what Americans believe." You're looking at a self-selecting subgroup of a self-selecting community that does not reflect Americans as a whole.
So is character, honor and integrity something that is no longer as valuable as it used to be?
1) Your poll isn't a valid indicator of current American opinions on the topic.
2) I seriously doubt you have any real evidence about how people felt about such things in the past.
In particular, the idea that Americans were somehow "more moral" in the past is total bull****. People just weren't talking about it, they weren't open about it.
We should also note it's not like foreclosures and bankruptcy were invented in 2005. People have been walking away from their debts for centuries.
Why would people demonize business because they imagine business could do something as immoral and unethical as they would do?
1) Because those businesses are operated by bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.
The mortgage originators and investment banks were clearly gaming the system, for the explicit purpose of their own material gain, no matter who got hurt. Mortgage originators frequently lied to potential home buyers, fraudulently filled out paperwork, and swindled people into loans no one should have offered. The investment banks pushed to roll back or thwart regulation which could have blunted the impact of the real estate bubble; they structured the deals so they could sell abysmal loans at high rates; they obscured the risks, which were already misjudged to begin with; they repackaged tranches of loans, over and over, in order to further obscure the risks; they bore no risk in the event of the failure of the MBSs they issued; they sold it off, knowing it was crap; they pressured ratings agencies into spraying perfume on the big pile of BS they were selling; to top it off, they often bet against the securities they themselves packaged. When everything went to hell in a handbasket, the banks felonious foreclosed long before they should have, resulting in thousands of people unfairly losing their homes. They also made the taxpayer foot the bill.
And then, while they received huge amounts of rolling credit, they fought tooth and nail against every reform which might prevent this from happening again.
Not everyone who worked in those fields was unethical. We need modern finance. But as an industry: **** THEM AND THE HORSE THEY RODE IN ON. They completely screwed over the American economy and citizens, purely for their own gain. There is no question that they acted immorally, and got away with it.
2) Homebuyers weren't completely innocent. However, unlike the businesses, they largely paid for their mistakes. When you walk away from your mortgage, you lose the house, the down payment, any money you've put into it. Your credit has a big black mark.
Their actions also didn't harm anywhere near as many people as the businesses' decisions. One person failing to pay their mortgage didn't harm nearly as many people as Goldman Sachs re-re-repackaging the worst subprime tranches, selling it off to pension funds that had no business buying them, betting against the securities via CDSs at AIG, and then getting 100% on the dollar courtesy of the American taxpayer when AIG got bailed out.
In contrast, the mortgage originators and banks got a slap on the wrist, the individuals went completely unpunished, and the banks are right back to paying out multi-million dollar bonuses. They deserve all the invective people have heaped upon them.
