A Useful Look at the Current Wall Street Mindset

I can summarize the well-informed tripartite New York magazine cover story on Wall Street, while eliding all the details: pretty much no one learned anything, rich people really enjoying spending money, it’s not unlikely there’ll be a round two mortgage debacle, Wall Street is more consolidated than ever and poses a “greater systemic risk,” we’re off to enjoy/exploit the BRICs (and CIVETs and EAGLEs, et al), even though Goldman Sachs, among others, took a bath on them over the last few years, slightly fewer Harvard MBA graduates are going straight into Big Finance (they’re all becoming consultants, which, same diff!), and lots of people on Wall Street are irritated at the negative attention and don’t understand why they can’t just keep on rollin’. Also you probably shouldn’t trust them with your retirement money, still. Surprise!