Investments
Basically, brokers were selling high-risk products that had high commissions instead of selling lower-risk ones that would have been a lower risk to their clients. What’s worse is that when the losses showed up and investors complained about it, the banks claimed to have done nothing in error.
One of the reasons for this though was that banks put so much pressure on their staff to sell products. They had to go to their friends and neighbors just to get their numbers up to the required amount. They wouldn’t have normally sold them, but they had to in order to please their superiors. This practice also took place in the UK and as a result the FSA has ruled that financial products should have no commission attached, to prevent pressure selling from staff.