NYTimes: Rewarding Bad Actors ( Who Make Us Poorer )

Americans are angry at Wall Street, and rightly so....

But crashing the economy and fleecing the taxpayer aren’t Wall Street’s only sins. Even before the crisis and the bailouts, many financial-industry high-fliers made fortunes through activities that were worthless if not destructive from a social point of view.

And they’re still at it. Consider two recent news stories....

Just to be clear: financial speculation can serve a useful purpose.... But speculation based on information not available to the public at large is a very different matter....

.... we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/opinion/03krugman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman