You can point at the current financial crisis, but there is absolutely no doubt that financial services are a fundamental part of society. The current crisis

You can point at the current financial crisis, but there is absolutely no doubt that financial services are a fundamental part of society. The current crisis owes a lot to greed, poor governance and ignorance (not only of the bankers, but the stockholders, pension funds, etc, etc, etc - i.e. everyone)... Even so, this isn't unique to the financial industry.