This Time, the Fallen Corporate Icons Have Gatsbyesque Roots

This story by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, associate dean of Yale University's School of Management, is part of a special series by TheStreet.com investigating shareholders' reaction to corporate corruption on Wall Street. Click here to see a full listing of stories.

The demography of the corporate scandals of 2002 differ so from the financial corruption 70 years earlier that one might wonder how the American Dream became a nightmare.

While the reviled rogue financiers of the 1930s were largely the misguided scions of prominent wealthy families, the more recent abuses have been committed by upwardly mobile strivers aspiring for identification with an aristocratic heritage they personally lacked. Rather than abuses of class influence, the recent rogue CEOs desperately sought class confusion.

Bernard Ebbers was a bar bouncer and high-school basketball coach -- not a telecommunications engineer or financier -- just before launching WorldCom. Enron's Ken Lay was the son of a part-time Baptist preacher and tractor salesman. Adelphia's John Rigas was the son a Greek immigrant hot-dog salesman. Tyco's "deal-a-day" Dennis Kozlowski was the son of a New Jersey policeman.

Fallen financial wizards such as Enron's Jeff Skilling; WorldCom's Scott Sullivan, Tyco's Mark Swartz and Citigroup's Jack Grubman had similar humble origins. For that matter, GE's Jack Welch was the son of train conductor ("Nearly every day was the same -- a ticket-punching journey through the same 10 depots over and over again.") and queen of class Martha Stewart the daughter of an autocratic alcoholic who failed in his career as a salesman.