For the first part of the Huntington Lecture Series, a series of lectures that celebrate former principal Jennifer Huntington, Mark Williams, a professor at Boston University, spoke about ethics and the banking industry Thursday at 4 in the film lecture hall.

He broke the lecture up into two main sections: Wall Street and ethics.

To introduce his lecture, Williams gave an overview of current and past economic climates saying that “overtime banking has become more risky. It’s like money is thrown up in the air.”

In his brief discussion of Wall Street, Williams described the stock market crash leading up to the Great Depression.

He then discussed the lack of ethics among economy executives. He said that because Wall Street and banks dominate the economy, when banks and Wall Street executives make unethical decisions, it hurts people who have invested money in those banks. Williams emphasized that there is a lack of ethical conduct amongst politicians and bank executives.

As an example of how unethical economic leaders can negatively impact the economy, he pointed to Bernie Madoff, describing how Madoff’s illegal activities cost innocent people millions of dollars. In addition, he showed a list of the top ten most powerful banks in the world and explained instances in which their top executives made unethical decisions.

To conclude, Williams made clear that banks control too much of the global economy and that frequently banking executives and investors act unethically.