There was a time when they were perhaps less sensitive to pressure, but they have always been a systemic problem in my mind.
A larger problem in my mind is the increasing pressure for short term results by lenders and investment banks. As financial institutions reward their managers and professionals more and more on immediate results, there is an ever increasing pressure on the part of all to make the big deal ASAP. If the financial institutions lose big next year, that is a problem for their shareholders not their managers and bankers. The managers and bankers will already have pocketed millions and may have fled the scene of the crime.
All this leads the bankers and managers to ramp up the risk/reward continuum as far as they can, then take the rewards and leave the risks with their employers. If the sh!t hits the fan, they simply find a new job.
This immediate payout scenario seems to have caught on around the world.
They don’t even have to leave the scene of the crime the Fed will see to it that the TBTF’s are kept in business (another sore spot for me since so many of the smaller conservative banks were wiped out).
Now they don’t even have to ask the Treasury for money in the future since the Fed invented a new accounting gimmick they can simply dump the debt off the Feds own balance sheet and onto that of the Treasury.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41198789
Like that ~ $2.2 Trillion in mortgage backed securities that the Fed took as collateral for “loans” to Wall Street.
Fed Balance Sheet Hits Record $2.2 Trillion In Assets On $71 Billion Weekly Increase In MBS
They’re worth what now, maybe 50% of their face value, tops?
In addition unemployment and foreclosures are going one way - up.
Which means the value of the mortgages go down.
But that’s not a problem now, because Bernanke will just sneak up to the Treasury and stuff the bill for the losses unto the taxpayers directly rather then continuing to use Fannie/Freddie to bail out the banks.
So you and I our children/grandchildren can labor as slaves for the leisure of the banking and government class, until we die.