A New York Times opinion piece by Harvard/Penn professors claims to illustrate the problem of corporate morality by looking at history. Their claim is that we have much increased corporate law in the last century. This I have no trouble believing. However, they also say "With all this criminal law, we ought to have achieved a high level of corporate honesty by now. Needless to say, current events suggest otherwise." I have trouble believing either of these statements, and both require significant backing up.

In other words, it's not clear to me at all that current events prove corporate honesty has gone down. Current events only prove that our standards or expectations for corporate honesty are higher than reality. That could simply mean that our expectations have risen faster than corporate honesty has.