Business people “are pretty widely mistrusted and seen as overwhelmingly self-interested,” Tom Steyer, one of the 38 billionaires who have graciously and ostentatiously agreed to donate the bulk of their fortunes to charity as part of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’s Giving Pledge, humbly informed the AP. “The point is that business people are not just laboring for themselves. They have bigger responsibilities and belong to a wider community.” “Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life couldn’t have said it better,” responded WSJ columnist Evan Newmark. “But then again, George Bailey ran a bankrupt savings and loan. He didn’t work the risk arbitrage desk at Goldman Sachs like Steyer and then create Farallon Capital, an overwhelmingly self-interested hedge fund.” And there’s more.
