This would be all fair and good if the risk they took along the way actually accrued back to Wall STreet. But the upsetting pattern that's in place is private p

This would be all fair and good if the risk they took along the way actually accrued back to Wall STreet. But the upsetting pattern that's in place is private profits, public losses. Wall Street isn't so much an engine for extracting value in the way you described as extracting value from the American public: take huge risks, keep the upside in the good years, and ask for a bailout when things go wrong. I've seen some analysis that says that if you back out government interventions, investment banks have basically been net zero / net negative for their equity holders since they stopped being partnerships and started going public.