"The banks had created value, but not as much as everyone had thought and he took advantage of that." He didn't 'take advantage' of anything. He did his homew

"The banks had created value, but not as much as everyone had thought and he took advantage of that." He didn't 'take advantage' of anything. He did his homework and reached an accurate and objective conclusion about the state of the financial system. He then provided this information to the markets by betting on what his research predicted. The real people who were taking advantage of the situation were the counterparties on his trades who were recklessly speculating on an unsustainable bubble (with other people's money). He was so successful doing this because at that point there were so few other dissenting voices to compete against. I don't know how you can say that it provides no value to be right when everybody else is wrong.