Wall Street & Nigerian princes

"You too can become rich. I offer very special auction rate securities. Low price. High yield. Right now offered by the Premiere Bank of Nigeria..."

What's the difference between...

A) Wall Street

and

B) "Nigerian princes" who send out spam emails.

One group (really) exists in Manhattan and they have managed to grab at least a few trillion.

Chip Maker Sues Banks Over Securities

Texas Instruments has sued Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of New York Mellon, accusing the banks of misleading the company into buying $524 million of auction-rate securities that have become illiquid.

source: nytimes.com

"have become illiquid" - I think that might be translatable in the vernacular as "are probably not worth shit".

When I was young I learned about the robber barons - I mean the American variety (Wikipedia). They appear on this list at Wikipedia: Wealthy historical figures 2008.

I couldn't believe the amounts of money and power they were able to get their hands on. And it seemed so strange that they then named colleges after themselves: Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Vanderbilt.

Well at least prestigious institutions of learning - founded by money gained from greed or not - are positive things.During this recent grab of trillions what has Wall Street done that will have a lasting positive effect?