The moment Salomon Brothers demonstrated the potential gains to be had from turning an investment bank into a public corporation and leveraging its balance sheet with exotic risks, the psychological foundations of Wall Street shifted, from trust to blind faith. No investment bank owned by its employees would have leveraged itself 35:1, or bought and held $50 billion in mezzanine CDOs. I doubt any partnership would have sought to game the rating agencies, or leapt into bed with loan sharks, or even allowed mezzanine CDOs to be sold to its customers. The short-term expected gain would not have
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