A lot of digital ink has been spilled since the failure of Lehman Brothers over whether major financial institutions were at least partially responsible for the financial meltdown and subsequent deep recession.

Are the people manning the desks at JP Morgan and other big banks bad people?

For me the answer is yes and no.

Yes, some people in banking are bad people. They do bad things for bad reasons. They lie, steal and cheat to personally enrich themselves. The reality is that if we look at a standard distribution of morality, half of them are going to be below average. Even if we quantified “bad” as a standard deviation or two off the mean, then that means there’s a whole mess o’ bad people in the world. When you look at jobs like investment banking, it’s hard to fault the logic that high monetary rewards draw people who are motivated by monetary rewards. They care about their money, not yours. Well, they do care about your money, but only to the extent that they want it for themselves.

And some people are good people. They’re dedicated at working with their clients, both business and individual, to help them achieve financial success.

How do you tell who is who? The best way is by what they talk about. If they want to tell you what to do, beware. If they listen to you, and ask you what you want to do, then they might be trustworthy.

Of course, it’s not so easy as a single thing, but I bet if you got to know your banker or financial adviser, then you’d have a better idea if they’re a good person or not.