What Exactly Did They Do?

Whatever investment banks do, (or did) it must not be that important. None of the big ones are around anymore. How will we ever live without them?

From In switch to banks, brokers eye thinner profits by Alistar Barr:

In less than a year, the five largest U.S. brokerage firms -- Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have, in turn, collapsed, been acquired by a larger commercial bank or decided to become a bank.

I think that all they used to do was steal people's money. Let’s remember that the person supposed to be fixing all of this used to be the head of Goldman Sachs. I’ll leave it to you to put two and two together.

I'm considering calling George W. Bush "Fagin" from now on.

Update:
Think Progress has this on the “fixer.”

Think Progress has this on “Fagin.”

Update:
From Salon Radio: Notre Dame finance professor Richard Sheehan by Glenn Greenwald:

University of Notre Dame Professor of Finance Richard Sheehan has been one of the most incisive economist-critics of the Paulson plan since it was unveiled, and he's my guest today on Salon Radio. We discuss the ways in which the key fear-mongering claims of Paulson have been both misleading and exaggerated; the reasons the bailout plan won't work even if the best case scenario occurs; where and how the Federal Government will get $700 billion to fund it; and the role Paulson himself has played in the events that have caused this crisis. From Professor Sheehan in the interview:

Unfortunately, Mr. Paulson was among those that were creating the problem, rather than warning about the problem. In his role as CEO of Goldman Sachs, Goldman -- under his watch -- created a whole lot of CDOs [collateralized debt obligations] that now are under the heading of "toxic waste." So it's amusing in a twisted way to look at him now as the one who is going to save us from imminent financial collapse, when it was at least in part brought on by the actions of Goldman, in terms of being so liberal in their willingness to create new and improved CDOs.