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When Satan tempts Eve in the Garden of Eden, according to poet John Milton, he is overcome by her beauty and momentarily becomes "stupidly good." Eve’s influence seems to negate Satan’s evil intentions, until “that hot hell in him” puts him back on track to beguile Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit.

When I wrote in a recent blog that the former chieftains of Fannie and Freddie committed crimes “…against humanity for being ‘stupidly good,’” I explained it was “for acting like sophisticated CEOs and consummate Wall Street titans while not having a clue as to the dangers confronting their industry.”

However, we have a conundrum in asking whether the commercial real estate industry leaders who embarrassingly lost fortunes of other-people’s money were simple fools entranced by “group think” or, rather, malicious facilitators of an investment bubble in pursuit of individual fortunes.

One top commercial real estate broker said of Lehman Brothers’ real estate group, “They were totally spreadsheet-oriented with no understanding of the industry.”  Were the leaders of Lehman’s real estate team -- which destroyed that once-great firm and the livelihood of many good people -- incompetent or avaricious?  

I hold that it is unreasonable to say commercial real estate leaders were swept up in market forces and that no one is to blame. The group heads and CEOs of our industry should be held to a high standard.

Motivational coach Art Dwight recently wrote, “My disillusionment was with a culture where principals were often sacrificed in the interest of career advancement.”  Were principles “often sacrificed” by the top titans of the financial investment world?