You conveniently cite the case where the perpetrators were also fooling themselves. What about the case where the perpetrators were saying on thing publicly and

You conveniently cite the case where the perpetrators were also fooling themselves. What about the case where the perpetrators were saying on thing publicly and privately betting against their products? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/24trading.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/business/24trading.html (fast forward to real life -- Princeton grads at Goldman Sachs dont go to jail...) Excerpt from article: A handful of investors and Wall Street traders, however, anticipated the crisis. In 2006, Wall Street had introduced a new index, called the ABX, that became a way to invest in the direction of mortgage securities. The index allowed traders to bet on or against pools of mortgages with different risk characteristics, just as stock indexes enable traders to bet on whether the overall stock market, or technology stocks or bank stocks, will go up or down. Goldman, among others on Wall Street, has said since the collapse that it made big money by using the ABX to bet against the housing market. Worried about a housing bubble, top Goldman executives decided in December 2006 to change the firm’s overall stance on the mortgage market, from positive to negative, though it did not disclose that publicly. Even before then, however, pockets of the investment bank had also started using C.D.O.’s to place bets against mortgage securities, in some cases to hedge the firm’s mortgage investments, as protection against a fall in housing prices and an increase in defaults. Mr. Egol was a prime mover behind these securities.