The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves(1). He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.
Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. “The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.”(2)
For years I have been calling the financial sector a glorified casino. Our "business" leaders in the 1% are only in the business of buying and selling pieces of paper. If you are not from Wall street and your bets go bad on the big global roulette table then "your" people have to pay. Of course the Wall street house never loses because the American taxpayer underwrites its bad debts.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/11/07/the-self-attribution-fallacy/