Dishonesty in the banking sector

Wells Fargo is the largest US bank by its market capitalization; however, the recent scandal showed it had been dishonest to its clients, as the bank opened more than 2 million deposit and credit-card accounts that may not have been authorized by their clients. The bank was fined 158 million dollars and the CEO of the bank has resigned from his advisory position at the Federal Reserve and the Department of Labor.

For decades, we have been trying our best to improve the banking sector. Firstly, bankers are required to follow moral and ethical regulations and most of our bankers are highly educated and pre-checked before they enter the industry. It seems these people are probably the best people we may get for our banking sector. Secondly, there are much more regulators in this sector than in other sectors, as the public and the governments realize that the banking sector has a very important position in the modern society. Thirdly, as the importance of the banking society has been generally realized, the public and the politicians have a lot of attention to this sector and the sector is not only under the watch by the regulators, but also by the general public as well. 

However, the scandals in the banking sector are mostly caused by banks' dishonest or irresponsible behaviors. Why could it happen? The banking sector is a very complex sector, which not only the outsiders cannot understand, the regulators are not able to look into every single detail in the sector. The Wells Fargo scandal is not a very complicated trick, but when the unauthorized accounts are hidden among the countless banking accounts, it is very easy to create such accounts but it takes awful a lot effort to find out these accounts. Not only the efforts are very different, but the payoffs of cheaters and watchdogs are also not at the same level, which is so obvious that there is no need for me to explain any more. 

Therefore, the complex banking networks increase the difficulty of regulations and maybe we should rejoice this scandal is fairly harmless, as we all know the banking scandals could become far more catastrophic.