Reading about the retiree couple who lost their $100,000 investment without knowing how, some may say that financial managers are money-grubbing, unscrupulous and self-interested scum of the earth.

"Of course the bank will not tell us to target retirees officially but you don't have to be a genius to know that retirees are usually heavy with cash," said one senior relationship manager from a foreign bank. I keep thinking that the quote's missing a "clueless" somewhere.

Their AIG cousins in the US don't fare much better. Funded by taxpayer bailouts, they go on frivolous spa retreats and English hunting trips to reward employees and customers respectively. Their best excuse: these had been planned months in advance. We all know of course that the global money meltdown was as unexpectedly sudden as ice melting in lava.

But really, who can fault them? Finance has always been where the money’s at, literally and otherwise. Practically anyone can be a financial executive. Just know your product and all you have to do then is your job: sell. Nevermind the risks; with all that money, banks never go bankrupt anyway.

Besides, the algorithms used to derive the products have all been rigorously thought out by computers. We rely on these infallible machines obviously, because these formulas are too complicated for the average any human to understand.

So the next time Ah Kong starts whining about "minibonds" or "high notes" destroying the thousands of dollars he broke his back to earn, tell him about what you've just read. Just don't blame it on the financial executives.