When they operate outside of that framework, the blame then goes to them too. There were SEC violations, there was fraud in the form of misrepresentations to investors, there was over-leveraging, and there were shoddy accounting methods. With the CDOs, to this day some of the mortgages are straight up lost! They don't know who owns what. There was also arguably fraud on the part of the credit rating agencies due to their clear moral hazard (where if they rated a security below AAA they would lose business). Just because the SEC and Fed failed to catch the crime (possibly because of lobbying too), does not mean Wall St. is not to blame. If a man shoots a victim with a gun do you blame the government because guns are legal or is the man still the criminal even if he was never prosecuted?
And either way, the framework was partly that way only because Wall St. LOBBIED to make it that way. I know you are anti-abortion because you think it is murder. Do you consider the anti-abortion lobby to hold some blame for the "murders"? If so, you should also consider the Wall St. lobby to hold blame for the very reason- they lobbied for part of the framework.
And allll that legal reasoning aside, there is a moral argument. Yes it is subjective, but privatizing gains based on extremely wild and risky activity that was NOT necessary (but only happened because the potential profits were higher while risk was passed on to taxpayers) while publicizing losses is arguably wrong just inherently. Kind of akin to those who think Paterno should have done more.
Edit: Related, this was in the news today- http://www.politicalfray.com/showthread.php?p=25158#post25158
Can you stop pretending that the banks are angels? It is tremendously shocking considering at the end of the day they have cheated both of us as taxpayers.
