The problem is not that people go work on Wall Street, the problem is when confronted with a destructive gov reg, instead of reporting back to the gov that one of their regs opens the system to toxic assets, they choose to not do that. Instead they take a defective reg and use it as an openning to make money despite the destructive long term effect of their actions. Example when bankers discovered that UST/SEC were not enforcing or auditing debt ratios for loans and made it easy for them to sell it off, bankers encouraged their loan officers/originators to generate as much loan applications/approvals as possible in order to earn the points/fees upfront and with no intention of holding the loan sold it off to unsuspecting investors with inaccurate prospectuses claiming the mortgage backed securities were AAA investments with full documentation (ala possession of titles/deed/mortgage notes). All that imploded in late 2008. These young bright workers were the subordinates and staffers to management giving the CEO daily briefings and assurances that all is well while they carried out the dastardly scheme for short term lucrative profit and planning to bail out before the scheme implodes leaving everyone else (taxpayers) holding the bag. The problem is the working culture and ethos fostered by the investment banker environment that allows for such fraudulent and “leave the other sucker holding the bag” mentality of all involved that is appalling. What is frightening is these schemers did not come from poverty dog eat dog neighborhoods or schools, rather many come from upper middle class families and upscaled ivy league schools which are suppose to represent some of the best and brightest of our society. If this rot is not eliminated, then the only way this will be resolved is violent revolution from the abused taxpayers and citizens. Forbes article misses what is wrong with Wall Street and corporate America and why Americans are growing to hate them.
You have your finger on the problem and the only real solution is to end the bailouts (and perhaps send of a few Moody's executives to jail for fraud.) Let the CEOs and brokers/salesmen who watched their companies suck the capital out of the system lose their jobs and their companies. If that lesson is never taught then we will see endless repeats of what happened in 2008.