Since the 2008 financial crisis, Wall Street has been the perpetual whipping boy for the ensuing recession that has rocked the global economy. In the United States, Manhattan bankers relied too heavily on subprime mortgages, the story goes, sparking the crisis -- in bureaucratic jargon, what is dubbed a "regulatory oversight failure." In Europe, the debt crisis -- which struck again last week when the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's stripped France of its AAA rating -- is often blamed on the fact that eurozone governments maintained outsized debt-to-GDP ratios, thereby breaking the rules laid down in the Stability and Growth Pact they signed when they joined the currency union.
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