Traders e a Marra da Picaretagem Financeira

Um bando de babacas incompetentes e pretensiosos: "The rewards have become so astronomical that the competition for coveted entry-level trading positions has become extremely fierce," mused the magazine's founder in the gilded year 2007. "Or is it the other way around -- the talent entering the market is so substantial that it has pushed the returns and, therefore, the rewards to levels once considered unthinkable?"

Although he didn't mention it, there was also a third possibility: that much of the financial engineering, the fancy new derivatives and balance-sheet legerdemain, was part of a bubble that would one day burst. That many of these hustlers, gamblers and pugilists were helping to misallocate capital on a fantastic scale. That with or without the aid of a $300,000 stereo component, they were telling America just what they thought of it.