That was Time Magazine's cover headline with the sub-title:  They had a party wow, you're going to pay" (meaning the U.S. taxpayer).

Of course, what happened took much more than Wall Street to generate such a colossal economic collapse.  It was far more complex, than finger pointing at Wall Street.

The savings and loan $200 billion bailout in the late 1980's was only a preview of things to come.  If at that strategic point in time, regulations had been demanded of banks, with carefully controlled oversight, perhaps the 2008 economic meltdown could have been avoided.

Instead, in 1999, then President Bill Clinton signed the mislabeled Financial Services Modernization Act, also called the Gramm-Leah-Bailey Act.  This act, simply stated, pulled down Glass-Steagall's reforms.  It eliminated the wall separating security firms and investors.