There was a great article in Vanity Fair back in 2008 or 2009; I can only find a pdf of it here: http://depts.washington.edu/teclass/articles472/Wall%20Street%

There was a great article in Vanity Fair back in 2008 or 2009; I can only find a pdf of it here: http://depts.washington.edu/teclass/articles472/Wall%20Street%20on%20the%20Tundra%20_%20vanityfair.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/teclass/articles472/Wall%20Stree... Money quote: "His job, he say s, was to sell people, mainly his fellow fishermen, on what he took to be a can’t-miss speculation: borrow yen at 3 percent, use them to buy Icelandic kronur, and then invest those kronur at 16 percent. "I think it is easier to take someone in the fishing industry and teach him about currency trading," he says, "than to take someone from the banking industry and teach them how to fish."" (article is much more thorough and balanced than that, don't get me wrong - it's just that these few paragraphs about this guy drive home who really was driving the bubble in 2008).