The fundamental question

James DeLong asks the right question. What has the financial sector contributed that justifies this:

[image error]DeLong writes:

So what do the bankers really claim as the business model that enabled them over the past decade to collect such a huge portion of all corporate profits? There are several possibilities, none of them flattering to the industry:

• That bankers actually did nothing and had no expertise, but clients thought, albeit wrongly, that they were getting something (no doing of the banks, of...