Credit Suisse traders were just plain dumb
It’s a shame the television series America’s Dumbest Criminals went off the air more than a decade ago, because the cases of Salmaan Siddiqui, 36, and David Higgs, 42, would have provided wonderful fodder as an example of high finance gone feloniously brain-dead. Lots of bankers probably committed the same acts during the crisis. And the majority who did will never be prosecuted, mainly because they weren’t so dense about the way they did it.
Imagine this: You are a Wall Street trader during the summer of 2007, specialising in complex mortgage bonds that no human being can fully understand. What little you do grasp about these bonds is that if their values go down too much, your year-end bonus won’t be as high as you want.
