Reason is a wonderful tool

http://causesofthecrisis.blogspot.com/2009/10/real-bank-pay-scandal.html

There's a difference between reason and rationalization -- smart economists use reason and free-thinking, unless they are under the influence of partianship or government subsidies, while government employees are forced by politics to rationalize.

The article above shows how politics and regulation created unintended consequences in the financial industry, and how politics draws false conclusions from the consequences, thereby creating more regulations with more consequences and more faulty conclusions, then more regulations....on and on and on....

The idea that compensation plans in the finance industry helped create risk and, consequently, the crisis has not been proven. The best deterent to risk is to allow the free market to punish irrational risks through failure. Government is creating less aversion to irrational risk by bailing out companies which should fail.

But risk in itself is not good or bad, it's just the nature of capitalism -- if there's no risk then there's no growth. It's the irrational risks based on government intervention which usually causes the most problems.