Jacob Weisberg has a good corrective to anti-banking hysteria, The Case for Bankers. My post below, Kill the traders!, was an indictment of a small minority who have an outsized effect on the majority. We're talking a power law distribution, most of the havoc is due to a few. Weisberg notes:
If you want to sputter, choke, and turn purple with rage at the people who wrecked your retirement, you might start with Cramer himself, the most prolific dispenser of bad advice to the investing public. But if you're looking for someone in the securities industry, you'd be justified in directing your outrage at Joseph Cassano, who ran the London-based AIG Financial Products subsidiary. As explained in a superb New York Times piece last fall, his 377-employee unit issued $500 billion in credit-default swaps--insurance against default on mortgage-backed securities. Losses on these once wildly profitable instruments led to collateral calls ...
