When people are talking about Wall Street, they are largely talking past tense.
There are no more investment banks which operate without much (if any) regulation anymore.
That is a huge plus right there!
There is certainly still stock trading and the like, and large consumer banks, which are all under much tighter regulation and control than the investment banks were. So some important components of Wall Street are still there - just not the wild eyed Robber Barons of the new century.
That is what these guys running these companies and pushing these bad investments and mortagages were - Robber Barons like in financial legends of the late ninteenth century. Larger than life crooks with larger than life fortunes built largely by exploiting other people.
And yeah - so far a lot of these guys look like they will get away with it (though at the very least the people in charge of Freddie and Fannie and a lot of congressmen who fed from
that trough look like they will be heavily investigated and perhaps charged down the line).
And yeah - at least the smarter ones will be lazing around on beaches overseas, living on the preoceeds of their Cayman Island and Swiss bank accounts.
But the thing is - because of the damage these greedy creeps have done, the rest of us (and I am not just talking US - this is a major worldwide issue due to how heavily foreign economies are invested and tied to ours) are facing at the very least a sharp recession (look to third quarter earnings statements which will be out in October to see if we are already in one) and at worst - a major depression.
I hate seeing a bailout, too - but I would hate even more to have millions of people lose their jobs, see all sorts of companies both large and small fail, and if things get really bad - see famine in Third World countries because they cannot get lines of credit to purchase food and medical supplies for their poor.
You see - the main problem right now is the credit markets. What is going on with the stock market is not the problem. Without credit businesses will go under, people cannot get mortagages or loans on things like cars, students cannot get loans, etc.
The underlying problem is that the credit markets have gone to hell with all of the bank failures (which make the surviving banks very paranoid about lending money) and with all of the subprimes mortgages that people are defaulting on.
It is the failure of the credit markets that could make the entire economy collapse.
And yes, I have been following this. As I have told my children, it could well be the most important historical event in the US since WW2.
If one good thing can come out of this, I am hoping that Reagonomics and the whole asstarded idea that the markets can take care of themselves and do not need oversight or regulation - when the markets are founded on pure profits and greed - will die a long overdue death.