Investment banks making money on the crisis they helped create

Ordinary people around the world are suffering, unemployment is rising, governments are spending billions to bail out banks and corporations, and no one knows when the global financial crisis is going to end.

At the same time, the investment banks that helped create the crisis are making huge profits again.

And the greedy banks are behaving the same way they did before the crisis.

As the German Spiegel writes, "the casino is open again, worldwide. Many investment banks are raking in massive profits once again, driving up risks and attracting talent with high salaries.

"It's as if nothing had happened, and as if it hadn't been precisely this type of behavior that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse last fall and then plunged the world economy into its worst crisis since World War II."

After receiving bailout funds, US investment bank Goldman Sachs, for example, "used money from the US government and the Federal Reserve Bank to speculate, behaving as if the bank were a gigantic hedge fund."

"We learn from history that we don't learn from history," said South African Archbishop and Nobel Laureate, Desmond Tutu.

Tutu said this some time ago, but it sounds as if he was speaking about the investment banks behaving the same way they did before the global financial crisis they helped create.