Agreed this is a weird article from the Economist and sort of shitty. There are two chains of thought in this article that bother me. First, I think everyone accepts that capitalists businesses have to take risks, but there is also the question of taking responsibility. It isn't actually a risk if there is no....risk of things going poorly and getting in trouble.

Second, is what you said mk. This article confuses the idea of risk and the idea of illegal practices. Something can be a risk and be illegal or be a risk and be legal. The LIBOR fixing is clearly illegal (and not really a risk either, the whole point of it it was to eliminate normal risk, instead they were risking getting caught by the law). In the US it might be more difficult, people were doing stupid things, but they weren't always illegal, which maybe speaks to the idea that we need to change our laws.

PS. Just so you know the Economist doesn't give bylines in general. I think its because they want everything to be super uniform and feel more authoritative.