Why are instances of fraud seemingly everywhere these days? James Surowiecki, writing in The New Yorker, provides a good explanation: fraud rises in good times and is discovered in bad times.

An oversupply of credulity doesn’t last, of course; when the crash comes, and people get more cynical and cautious, the frauds are exposed. As Warren Buffett put it, “You only learn who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out.”