After all, what should banks do when, instead of keeping sub-prime mortgages on their books, monitoring their performance, and incurring capital requirements, they can securitize them advantageously (because the rating agencies have a stake in the business), avoid capital requirements, and profit from investors’ inexperience with such products. Indeed, even if things turned ugly and banks’ equity suffered, executives knew that their own generous bonuses and pension packages most likely would not.