To be fair, there are a lot of engineers on the market with a small-but-positive value under a structured process who would be totally useless in an environment like this. I can see why it might be rational to managers.

The problem is that software engineers are paided poorly compared to bankers, executives, and a myriad of other occupations relative to how it used to be 30 years ago. Even doctors aren't paid like they used to be. So way too many smart people go into finance and real estate, which are jobs that really anybody could do, except that our corrupt system makes it worthwhile to pay the smartest people to come up with new ways to scam the public and the government. See: Fed policy, CDOs, sub-prime loans, QE...

Sub prime loans are the only thing out of that list where the public was scammed. Everything else you listed are internal banking things.

The public absolutlely paid the price in the form of bailouts. If those banks had been allowed to fail I would agree with you, but they knew they'd probably be bailed out from the beginning and used CDOs to ensure it.

QE is a direct transfer of wealth from dollar holders to investors and banks. No way around that.

The bailouts were loans and equity stakes which got paid back, not grants.

Yeah, this is always what I hear from selfish people. What is "competent"? Even if I know what that is, hiring them is hard and ad-hoc. Agile is a way to orgnize _everyone_ to deliver. Even "non competent ones". Those teams will deliver slower, but will deliver, instead of failing.