In Trillin's time in college, only those in the bottom third of their university class used to go on to Wall Street careers, which were boring and only moderately remunerative. But even while the dullards ascended to the top positions at the banks, Wall Street became a more exciting and challenging place, paying people beyond their wildest dreams. It started attracting and recruiting the smartest students in class, people who thought they could price CDO squared and CDO cubed (particularly egregious forms of securitization involving collateralized debt obligations) and manage their risks. As
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Hypothesis that top management at banks in 2000s were all starting careers when Wall Street took the poorer performing students out of college so they weren't that smart. But then Wall Street got cool and younger geniuses started working for these dullards who didn't know what the whizzes were doing so top management were actually just incompetent. Maybe, but seems unlikely. Would guess that CEOs and other top managers are still well above mean (even if the mean of those going to Wall Street in their cohort was below average overall...you've got to be somewhat smart to rise to the top, right?)
