Where else does this happen?

Tonight's "Real Time With Bill Maher" featured a sharp, interesting interview with TARP overseer Elizabeth Warren, during which Bill asked (I'm paraphrasing), "Is there any other society in which people screw each other for money the way we do?"

Excellent, excellent question, and (as the never-modest Maher asserted) it's one that really cuts to the heart of so many of the problems we now face. While Americans certainly have no monopoly on greed, it's fair to ask: is there any other place on Earth in which it's practiced so baldly? In which avarice is actually celebrated, however two-facedly? In which it often seems to displace other social or religious values--indeed, in which the failure of the individual to make this displacement generally excludes him from a serious role in economic life? (Try telling the boss you can't to do X because it's immoral.) In which it has been woven so firmly into society's fundamental institutions that will not loosen its hold even as it uncontrollably, perhaps irreversibly, imperils those very institutions? In which it is has become the boldfaced subtext of the national creed?

I'll keep an eye out for the transcript or a clip....