It happened in the 1880s, again in 1929 and even more famously in 1987. After every stock market party, the police arrive to pick through the morning-after rubbish and find something ugly.
The Wall Street party was no different this time. Among the burst dotcom balloons and empty champagne bottles left on the street in 2001, US regulators found some allegedly criminal acts as well as questionable behavior among the financial sector's biggest firms.
Two grubby areas have come to light. The first is the behavior of analysts, and the second, the methods used to underwrite new shares. The latter, investigated by the securities and exchange commission, the US attorney's office and the National Association of Securities Dealers, could lead to criminal charges.
The fallout from these inquiries has already been felt in the UK. Several private investors have contacted Jacob Zamansky, head of US law firm Zamansky & Associates, about filing complaints against analysts. Zamansky, who is acting on behalf of almost 20 investors in the US, could file these cases imminently.
In the US, more than 20 claims have already been filed against Wall Street firms and their analysts. Zamansky filed the first of these for a client against Henry Blodget, one of the street's best-known internet analysts, and Merrill Lynch, his firm.
Blodget and Merrill stand accused of "systematic fraud ... on an industry-wide basis" for touting shares in internet stocks without revealing the extent of their financial reliance on the company. Dr Debases Kanjilal, a New York pediatrician, is claiming the US US$600,000 he lost from an investment in one online directory company and US$10 million in punitive damages. Merrill has described the charges as meritless.
Most Wall Street banks reward analysts using client review and banking fees. Few chart the success of an analyst's recommendations.
This means that high profile analysts such as Blodget, Mary Meeker at Morgan Stanley and Jack Grubman at Salomon Smith Barney can be rewarded by winning more business for their firms.
Complaints of bias have long dogged analysts. The frenzy of recent years, when high-tech analysts used newly minted valuation tools to justify huge premiums, simply opened up the practice to a wider audience. "The analysts pumped up this tech bubble and left investors holding the bag," says Zamansky.
Spurred on by constituents' complaints, some politicians have started to echo this view. On June 14, investment bankers are expected to be hauled in front of Congress to discuss their behavior. Republican Congressman Richard Baker, who chairs Washington's capital markets sub-committee, believes the coded language used on Wall Street "penalized" ordinary investors.
A year ago, analysts believed that just 206 US companies -- or 0.8 percent of all those rated -- should be sold, according to research by Thomson Financial-First Call. At a time when most US shares were trading at all-time highs, nearly 74 percent were rated either "strong buy" or "buy". Only those institutional investors lucky enough to receive a call from the investment bank would know which of the "accumulate" or "hold" stocks should be dumped forthwith.
"The writing is so coded that only sophisticated investors understand that you would have to be an idiot to own the stock," said Baker this week. "Mom and Pop investors are not getting the same treatment."
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