Phil Angelides, a California state treasurer for eight years, is no stranger to big money and politics. But as chairman of Congress’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission looking into the 2008 Wall Street collapse, he was shocked. “I am no political naïf, but I was taken aback at the roughness, sheer power, arrogance, and swagger,” he said of the financial industry and its political and lobbying clout in Washington. “My biggest takeaway was the extent to which financial services drive the economy, and how much of it was just betting.”

Angelides, a 1974 Harvard grad who was accepted at HBS but did not enroll, appeared on Wednesday at the invitation of HBS students as part of the Leadership and Values Initiative. With HBS lecturer Nicolas Retsinas, an old friend, moderating the discussion, Angelides declared that the crisis was foreseeable, avoidable, and based on human shortcomings. He cited the FCIC’s January report that found failures in financial regulations and enforcement, corporate governance, risk management, and accountability and ethics at all levels. Overarching this, Angelides said, is a climate in which “too much of America’s capital is tied up in making money, rather than creating long-term value.” Among a number of HBS alumni providing their perspectives to the fact-finding panel, recorded here on audiotape, were JP Morgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon (MBA 1982), Paulson & Co.’s John Paulson (MBA 1980), and CIT Group’s John Thain (MBA ’79).

Preceding Angelides on campus by a few weeks — also at the students’ invitation — was Oscar-winning documentarian Charles Ferguson, director of Inside Job, an examination of the 2008 meltdown. With HBS professor Bharat Anand moderating, Ferguson screened and discussed his film before an audience of several hundred in Burden Hall. A successful high-tech businessman, author, and consultant with a PhD in political science from MIT, Ferguson believes, as does Angelides, that outright fraud was integral to the crisis on Wall Street and that criminal trials are in order. As long as the attitude of too big to fail and too cool for jail persists — and it still does, the two men agree — little will change.

While Wall Street remains a popular destination for HBS students, Chris Johnson (HBS 2012) of the Leadership and Values Initiative, noted, “We’ve had a lot of deep conversations about these issues in class. Many classmates wonder if they can succeed in finance without pushing ethical boundaries.” Three years after the meltdown, many Americans are wondering that too.

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