Wall St., Cont'd.

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The ‘Subsidy’: How a Handful of Merrill Lynch Bankers Helped Blow Up Their Own Firm

This article is part of a series that just won a Pulitzer. Topical for us, obviously. This is why I find it difficult to buy totally into the Wall Street is Evil narrative. What firm wants this to happen to it? What new regulation is supposed to prevent assholes from acting like assholes?

One place where I do think that both Inside Job and the the Big Short, as well as Michael Lewis's prescient 1980s book on bond trading called Liar's Poker make an excellent point is that Wall Street has misaligned risk and reward. Blow up your firm? Oh well, so long as you didn't commit a provable fraud you can retire on the millions you made in the meantime. Senior executive in a firm that got blown up? In the old partnership days that would have been your money, but these days it belongs to the shareholders, and who gives a damn about those guys?