Perhaps this is because investors are not the perfectly informed paragons found in efficient-market theory.
But if earlier generations were paragons of good behaviour, why do so many old children's books praise naughtiness?
Many leaders on the continent are hardly paragons of democracy themselves, and so would never condemn a fellow despot.
But even among the world's paragons of corporate virtue, reality and rhetoric diverge.
In comparison, independent, non-TARP banks like the Spirit of Texas appear like paragons of traditional capitalist virtue and homespun values.
If even those paragons of efficiency are feeling the pain, what chance is there that Detroit can turn itself around by March?
But every edgy guy I knew in college outperformed (in terms of career success) the paragons of virtue we went to school with.
The really great writers, like those I mentioned earlier, were considered paragons of a talent few could claim to have mastered so thoroughly.
Many missionaries become paragons of self-discipline, with their trademark white shirts and ties and a teetotalling, non-smoking, caffeine-free and abstinent Mormon work ethic.
Along with millions of working Americans, they are paragons of personal responsibility, not Romney's caricature of self-pitying victims seeking to live off government benefits.
Moreover, the Greens in office are turning out to be paragons of reliability, especially Joschka Fischer, the foreign minister, who so far has hardly put a foot wrong.
The tigers are sometimes portrayed as paragons of free-market policies.
If Krugman and Bernanke were correct in believing inflation has a positive influence on the workforce, Zimbabwe and Argentina would both be paragons of how to achieve full employment.
For example, I daresay that the financiers and politicians of 2011 are veritable paragons of public virtue compared to the pirates who commandeered our way of life during the Gilded Age.
FORBES: Do the Chinese Envy America? IMF Forecasts, Purchasing Power Parities -- and Chuck Colson
But if we gun guys are the paragons of civic virtue that we claim to be, why do we have to be ordered to lock up our guns or report a gun theft?
Some airline customers may not be fragrant paragons of exquisite taste, but attacking them online is a public-relations (PR) disaster that raises the question of whether the two firms have done enough to educate staff about acceptable use of the internet.
ECONOMIST: A tale of two airlines and their Facebook fiascos
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