They were too smart

There has been a whole lot of idiocy written about the banks going belly up. One of the worst cases is the often repeated „They are idiots“

Let's make an analogy:
Say there's a dude who took a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Five years later you find out that he has made about ten times what the previous dishwasher made… and you think “Wow, this guy must have worked hard.” Then you find out that he managed to do it, without washing any dishes. You think “Surely no Christmas bonus for him this year”. But then you find out that not only does he get a bigger bonus than ever before, but he has also broken all the dishes, so that the government has to step in buy new dishes quick so that the restaurant can operate, and the dishwasher pockets another few months of his huge salary.

That dishwasher is certainly not stupid. He got rich by doing basically nothing. He is not going to jail. And he hasn't even been fired. There may be some moral issue with him implicitly agreeing to wash the dishes (which he apparently never intended to do) which were not washed and were more often broken, but the man is NOT an idiot. He operated in his own self-interest, which the extreme free-marketeers will tell you brings the greatest good to all. The current banking crisis is proof positive that Ayn Rand was dead wrong.