Running your company into the ground and sending the economy to the brink of the cliff is not a cause for worry. Your insurance or the shareholder will pay any fines and incarceration is highly unlikely. Now, if only the pesky Occupy Wall Street protesters would go away.

The good times are gone for now but memories live on of the day when Wall Street realized that they could make money purchasing mortgages from subprime lenders. Bonuses soared on products made out of subprime mortgages that increased leverage, reduced capital, generated big profits and more generally gamed the rules that control risk.

The link between borrower and lender was severed by mortgage securitization. The repayment of the lender's "affordability products," such as a negative amortization combined with a second lien and a stated income loan, became some else's problem. The triple-A rating of these financial products by Moody's, S&P and Fitch paid for, then sold by Wall Street firms to unwary investors got the loans off their books.

The results were that 91 percent of the triple-A subprime residential mortgage-backed securities issued in 2007 and 93 percent of those issued in 2006 were subsequently downgraded to junk status. Not a bad run. Now, an army of lobbyists and feckless regulators will create new possibilities.

Mickey Beary, Richland