Who profits from the crisis?

1. preachers of irrationality?
2. parsimony?
3. drug dealers- which may be also 1. if you count religion as opium

Let me explain ;-)

ad 1.
We see an exchange of one irrationality by another. While self claiming financial experts were selling us financial products with high risk and we were accepting that pushing away the risk- we now have a full return of another irrationality - namely religion. Seems that enlightenment was not sufficient mastering the crisis. No the brancuopcy was not the revenge of god because we were wasting resources, it was pure stupidity and the will to push aside the fact that wealth is limited if you concede all a certain share. So there is hope that we will be proud of our newly acquired knowledge about the economy and not deliver ourselves to preachers or irrationality.

ad 2.
People might be heading for more savings donating less. On the other head the lesson learned is also that teaming reduces the risk. This is not restrained to family but includes job and friends.

ad 3.
In the first run the huge amount of money lost might lead to the assumption that a lot of people now wants to forget what happened. On the second glance we see that they will fight against the swindlers having sold the junk bonds. So again there is hope that well considered behavior is on the agenda.

Summarizing- while there might be the risk that the devilish temptation - even if it is looking cherubic - will have its chance - people will allow a second rational argument and not trap into one of the mentioned pitfalls.