> Quants aside, the concepts that are used (take, for example, "mezzanine capital") are mostly buzzwords used to give a professional air to really very simple processes/ideas.

This is incredibly accurate. Aside from the guys who come out of MIT and Caltech to do quantitative analysis, almost everything on Wall Street is smoke and mirrors hiding what are incredibly simple ideas. Even a lot of the ostensibly esoteric and complex products (that a lot of the Wall Street guys don't understand!) hide a really simple core concept once you peel back the layers of jargon.