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Just how far Wall Street drifted into situational values came out in some of the congressional hearings about the causes of the 2008 subprime crisis. On April 27, 2010, Senator Carl Levin (a Democrat from Michigan) questioned the Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar about e-mails in which Goldman bankers described bonds they were selling to their customers as “crap.”

Sen. Levin: And when you heard that your employees in these e-mails, in looking at these deals, said God what a shitty deal, God what a piece of crap, did you feel anything?

Viniar: I think that’s very unfortunate to have on e-mail.

Sen. Levin: Are you … ?

(Laughter)

Viniar: And very unfortunate.

Sen. Levin: On e-mail? How about feeling that way?

Viniar: I think it’s very unfortunate for anyone to have said that in any form.

Even with Senator Levin’s prodding, Viniar seemed not to realize that the problem was what was said, and the rank cynicism behind it, not the fact that it was put in an e-mail that became public. Goldman had fallen into such situational behaviors—just sell any piece of junk, just get the deal done—that it was ready to injure its own customers. That is about as far from sustainable behavior as one can imagine for an investment bank, and even when it was exposed, the firm’s chief financial officer didn’t get it.

In his book, Seidman highlights the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, one of the main themes of which is the conflict between situational and sustainable values. The title character is a big-time, self-centered sports agent who has a sudden moral awakening one night and writes a new “mission statement” for his firm. It proposes that he and the other agents in the firm restructure their business and reduce the number of their clients while better serving the clients they keep. In essence, his message is: Let’s be in it for the long haul and for the right reasons in the right way—let’s behave less situationally and more sustainably.

Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, stuffs a copy of the new statement in the mailbox of everyone in his firm. The next morning, when he walks into the office, he receives a standing ovation from fellow agents, bookkeepers, and secretaries. His boss, Bob Sugar, played by Jay Mohr, who is grinning broadly, joining in the applause, and giving Maguire a thumbs-up, is asked by another senior colleague, “How long do you give him?” Sugar answers out of the side of his mouth, “Hmmm, a week.” Sure enough, within a week Maguire is fired by Sugar, and his former co-workers move in quickly to strip him of all his clients. His career is devoured by the very situational values he was decrying.

Seidman notes that the film revolves around a series of personal relationships in which the characters wrestle with the choice between the philosophy of “Just do it!” (just do whatever the situation allows) and the philosophy of “Just do it right” (think and act sustainably).

For instance, after being booted from his firm, Maguire thinks he has been able to hold on to one big client, a college star, to represent—the prospective number-one National Football League draft choice Frank Cushman, played by Jerry O’Connell. When Maguire goes down South to visit Cush and his father, Matt, played by Beau Bridges, at their small-town home, they make an ostentatious handshake deal and the father says that a written contract confirming that Jerry represents his son isn’t necessary. “My word is stronger than oak,” Matt tells Jerry. A few weeks later, though, at the NFL draft, Sugar swoops in and steals Cush away from Maguire, simply because in that situation he was able to engineer a better deal, or so he claimed. And anyway, Cush and Maguire had no contract, only a handshake. Maguire confronts Matt and tells him how disappointed he is.

“I’m still sort of moved by your ‘My word is stronger than oak’ thing,” Maguire seethes.

At that point, Maguire is left with one employee ready to work for him, the sweetly sincere secretary Dorothy Boyd, played by Renée Zellweger, who is swept off her feet by Jerry’s sustainable-values