Innovation has brought us MERS — an entity that helps facilitate the securitization of mortgages. Supposedly MERS has saved the mortgage securitization industry a billion dollars since inception (at least that is the number mentioned in every story I read about MERS). Never mind the trillions that have gone into bailing out Government Sachs and other criminal financial organizations who trade securitized mortgages and derivatives.
Generally, it seems that financial innovation is just a way for the crooks on Wall Street to show short term ‘profits’ which allows them to collect massive bonuses. The short-term ‘profits’ are later dwarfed by the size of the eventual taxpayer bailout. As near as I can tell, the size of the bailouts are about 1000x bigger than any of the supposed benefits from financial innovation.