The inventors of the financial weapons of mass destruction, and those who stood idly by as the inflated bonuses kept rolling in, have not exactly been banished from Wall Street many simply changed jobs. February saw taxpayer-subsidized insurance giant AIG hiring Thomas Russo as its general counsel. Russo's résumé includes 15 years at Lehman Brothers, where he served as its chief legal officer. His duties at the firm that failed catastrophically in 2008 included chairing the operating-exposures committee as part of a portfolio that gave him major influence over the bank's risk-taking. Russo's appointment follows the trend of the previous year, when Tom Montag, Goldman Sachs' former head of sales and trading in the Americas, became Bank of America's global president of banking and markets. Montag had privately referred to a financial product Goldman was selling as "one shitty deal." Dick Fuld, the disgraced former chief executive of the now defunct Lehman Brothers, last year joined the boutique investment firm the Matrix Advisors. And in May, he also registered as an employee with the investment-banking firm Legend Securities. That could be a comedown, however: he's also said to have switched from flying on private jets to traveling on public airlines.
The Top 10 Everything of 2010
- Top 10 Albums
- Top 10 Animal Stories
- Top 10 Apologies
- Top 10 Biz Deals
- Top 10 Buzzwords
- Top 10 Campaign Ads
- Top 10 Comebacks
- Top 10 Crime Stories
- Top 10 Facebook Trends
- Top 10 Fashion Statements
- Top 10 Feuds
- Top 10 Fiction Books
- Top 10 Fleeting Celebrities
- Top 10 Food Trends
- Top 10 Gadgets
- Top 10 Green Stories
- Top 10 iPhone Apps
- Top 10 Late-Night Jokes
- Top 10 Magazine Covers
- Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
- Top 10 Movie Performances
- Top 10 Movies
- Top 10 New Species
- Top 10 Nonfiction Books
- Top 10 Numbers
- Top 10 Oddball News Stories
- Top 10 Overreported Stories
- Top 10 Pictures
- Top 10 Plays and Musicals
- Top 10 Quotes
- Top 10 Political Gaffes
- Top 10 Reality-TV Moments
- Top 10 Religion Stories
- Top 10 Scandals
- Top 10 Scientific Discoveries
- Top 10 Songs
- Top 10 Sports Moments
- Top 10 Talented Web Videos
- Top 10 Toys
- Top 10 Travel Moments
- Top 10 TV Commercials
- Top 10 TV Episodes
- Top 10 TV Series
- Top 10 Tweets
- Top 10 Twitter Moments
- Top 10 World News Stories
- Top 10 Underreported Stories
- Top 10 U.S. News Stories
- Top 10 Video Games
- Top 10 Viral Videos
In 50 wide-ranging lists, TIME surveys the highs and lows, the good and the bad, of the past 12 months