Gold is not the answer. The only thing gold does is concentrate the control of money supply to large banks even more than it does now. If you want to talk about history, go watch the film "The Secret of Oz". There is a good reason why we are not on the gold standard anymore. Tying the value of money to gold simply makes it easier for wealthy individuals to control. That is the consistent theme throughout history. If you want to talk about currencies failing, what you are really looking at is national debt. A Government should not have debt. The problem is the backwards system the world uses to increase the money supply - Borrowing money from banks (at interest). Meanwhile, banks can take any deposit and loan up to 10 times that amount screwing up our money supply for us! Taxes do not pay for anything but interest on our debt. That is the problem.

Sprogga is correct. Financial Mathematics/Engineering degrees are really BS flavor of the month type deals. You are better off just getting your PHD in math and just applying to Bank internships. You will get them since you actually know math and are most likely smarter than most of the guys on the trading desk.

That's the problem. With so much money to be made, they weren't paying attention to risk. Risk management used to have power over traders, that went the other way around when the credit/mortgage market picked up. After a while, traders were able to push up their risk limits. Let's not forget that S&P and Moody's gave the banks shitty data to begin with. What the hell were these derivatives doing rated above BBB anyway?