Matt Taibbi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently summarized the mythos of Wall Street types. Taibbi’s analysis is nearly perfect, except that he falls prey to the fashion of dressing up our psyches in outdated APA-style vestments. The word for the function he describes is “mythos.”Ayn Rand is credited with being the queen of the myth of self-interest as the highest social good. Her tome, Atlas Shrugged, is the bible of Gordon Gecko-type greedheads. Ellis Weiner calls it a “deeply adolescent piece of science fiction.” It’s the myth that shapes the cosmos of Wall Street in the minds of bankers even before they act in it.