Thanks for the feedback that clearly fits the picture arising from the VERY courageous US finance blogosphere. Very few European equivalents to the vocal and useful sites such as ZH, Jesse café, Naked capitalism, Charles Hugh Smith, mises.org... I owe them to jump off the rotten financial system as early beginning of 07.

Here in Europe at head-office level (I used to work there in a distant past), the executives of our banking system and most corporate officers of internationally traded companies share a lot of the characteristics of their US counterparts. And we have our share of badly handled credits but certainly do not have this amount of banking/finance corruption overall. They - the financial pressure groups - are not really in control as you can guess looking at our local messy quasi-unidirectional "I want more" French strikes...

I know that I can purchase costly items over the Internet straight from US citizens in full trust. This is America the way we like. But sure I would not get in touch with a member of the US financial/legal system with a ten-foot pole. The more Ivy League the worse. This is systemic and has little to do with personal ethics.

The course of events is alas related to a series of bad events starting technically with the 1997 Asian crash, IMF treatment. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that it was way too rough. It had an unintended collateral consequence. Asian started to save to the bones. And as a result we - OCDE countries - got these stupidly low rates - intentionally made lower and much worse by Greenspan/Bernanke - and of course the China communist party internal agenda.

In such macro-financial environment you just could not survive properly in the "finance industry" (sic, what a wording) in the kind of environment that was nurtured internationally whilst doing your work honestly. You'd be driven out by competitors. The more reckless the more successful.

The middle class will pay an extremely heavy price for the horrendous capital mis-allocations that occurred during this time period. Most of it will not be "middle class" any more once the monetary crisis has run its due course. There is now nothing that you can do to stop it! Just take care of the family and friends. And hope that democracy stays intact. At federal level only of course. I have little doubt that at root level, local or state, America will remain what it used to be.