Recommended watching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_th...

animex comment is so true by the way that it is insanely ridiculous. Anything that is said about ICO can be directly applied to Synthetic CDOs that do not contain what is claimed. How many people went to jail for selling those fraudulent products?

By this logic we should be using tax payers money to compensate people who suffered losses in ICOs. And we should also use tax payers money to pay the bonuses of the ICO leading CEOs afterwards. How can this be: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-blast-from-a-financial-cri...

The main difference here is that Wall Street does have more well regulated segments, such as your traditional investments like stocks and bonds. I think disclosure of the nature of investment is a key here. Even more risky areas (options and whatnot) can be approached at with at least some degree of analysis -- you are investing in companies of whom are required to maintain a series of statistics that can help you determine value.

Fraud still happens even in this space, but it's not a huge moonshot like an ICO would be in the best of circumstances (let alone the completely fraudulent make-money-fast type ICO scams.)

My thought on the CDO crisis and the somewhat nonchalant reaction from regulators, is that this was a sign that Wall Street needed more regulation in certain areas, their howls of protest on regulations that did appear post-2008 (eg Dodd-Frank) notwithstanding. It is worth noting that in the Savings and Loans scandal 20ish years earlier, people were jailed for selling fraudulent investment vehicles. The reaction to the CDO driven crisis in contrast was very weak IMHO.

Sounds a lot like how many people support the current POTUS.