From Where Are the Customers’ Yachts by Fred Schwed Jnr: The picture in the popular mind has always been more sinister. The public feels that Wall Streeters are not dunces at all; that they are crooks and scoundrels and very clever ones at that; that they sell for millions what they know is worthless; in short, that they are villains, not children. Everyone interested helps to perpetuate this picture. The outsider believes it readily enough – else how did those stuck-up Wall Streeters get so rich? The burnt customer certainly prefers to believe that he has been robbed rather than that he has been a fool on the advice of fools. Even Wall Street men themselves tend to encourage the idea. They are ever ready to confide to you that they know of the inside dishonesty of someone else. Faced with the huge losses "investors" have suffered, their egos subconsciously suggest to them that it is better to be regarded as Machiavelli than as one who has spent his adult life engaged in mumbo-jumbo...
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