The shift of financial activity from bank balance sheets to the off-balance-sheet realm of securitization and derivatization loosely defined as Wall Street wouldn't have been such a disaster if it had actually worked as advertised spreading risk, encouraging innovation, bringing the best minds to bear on the biggest financial problems. Instead, Wall Street's leaders did an atrocious job rewarding the foolhardy, steering capital to the least productive uses and running away from responsibility for their errors. And they got paid tens of millions of dollars a year for it.
The Financial Crisis Blame Game
Who and what got us into this financial mess? Here's my far-from-exhaustive list of the guilty
Justin Fox