Analysts aren't bad. They are not Gods. It's as difficult for them as any anyone else to detect the subtleties of disingenuous accounting, predict management resignations or guess the direction of interest rates. Financial professionals had entered some weird new head space. On The Street column of The Wall Street Journal and the Lex column of The Financial Times, where they could advance their narrow self-interests.
Many analysts wear multiple hats.
One is to recommend their favourite stocks and the other is to get investment banking business done. These two jobs conflict with each other. In the past five years, the job of a research analyst on Wall Street has changed from research to entertainment. Pick an industry, get rah rah about it, meet all the private companies, take them public, put a buy rating on them, pass go, collect bonus. Objective analysis is gone.