From left, Angelo Mozilo, Chuck Prince and James Cayne.
When times are good, it's awfully hard to tell the knuckleheads from the geniuses in the financial-services business. That's because bad loans and bad investments tend to look just as profitable as good ones--and sometimes even more so--until trouble hits.
Lots of trouble has been hitting lately, with private-equity loans turning sour, AAA-rated subprime mortgage securities turning into junk, and all manner of other bets going bad. This ought to make it easier to figure out just who in the money business knows what he's doing. Which explains why the just-completed earnings-reporting season for banks and other financial firms was the...
