Reports last week that Ford Motor Co. recorded $2.1 billion in quarterly profits due to increased sales helped by new models was welcomed by most Americans. News that Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs booked $3.46 billion in quarterly earnings, a 90 percent jump over profits for the same period last year, was viewed with less enthusiasm.

Despite both companies reporting big profits, the differences between the two are stark.

In the case of Ford, the company was the only Detroit automaker to not take federal bailout money. In the view of some, that puts Ford in a different category than General Motors and Chrysler.

Still, most Americans appreciate all three Detroit automakers for their role in the economy. Each of the companies hire engineers and designers to create new vehicles. They employ tens of thousands of production workers to make cars and trucks to be sold in the United States and around the world.

By contrast, Goldman Sachs' profits were reportedly mostly from trading. In today's world of Wall Street investment banking, that generally means gambling.

Goldman booked most of its massive profits through proprietary trading, meaning plenty of investments in complex and risky investments — not unlike the complex and risky investments created and sold by Goldman and other Wall Street firms that worsened the recent financial crisis.

Decades ago, investment banks made money by advising clients in mergers and acquisitions or raising money for companies going public. Today, the investment banks make most of their money by trading.

And some of Goldman's recent trading has attracted unwanted attention in the form of a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against the firm for fraud over the creation of a complex investment vehicle based on risky subprime mortgages that was designed to fail, despite Goldman's marketing the product as a solid investment.

Late last week, it was learned that the U.S. Justice Department is developing a criminal case against Goldman Sachs.

Writing in the New York Times, Bethany McLean noted that the complex trading in which Goldman is charged with misleading investors will "open up a window into modern finance, and the view is downright ugly. This deal didn't build a house, finance a world-changing invention or create any new jobs. It was just a zero-sum game that transferred wealth from what Wall Street calls "dumb money" (often those who manage the public's funds) to a hedge fund."

In Detroit, engineers work on improving cars to boost fuel economy and increase safety. The engineering leads to real, tangible products made and sold around the world.

On Wall Street, financial engineers create new and highly complex investments simply as a vehicle for betting, and as a way to make money. As the New York Times commentator noted, the sort of financial engineering fueling record Wall Street profits does not build a product, finance the construction of a house or create jobs. It is pure gambling.

There was a time when commercial banks, which take deposits and make loans, were separate from investment banks, the riskier side of the financial world. But over the years, Wall Street campaign donations and lobbying succeeded in convincing Congress in the 1990s to repeal the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that maintained that wall of separation between old-fashioned, even boring, banking and the risky world of investment banking.

During the recent financial crisis, the few investment banks remaining were at risk of collapse and were allowed to convert to bank holding companies to be able to benefit from nearly no-cost borrowing from the Federal Reserve as one component of the Wall Street bailout.

And despite most large banks paying back the TARP bailout money to escape limits on executive pay and bonuses, they still benefit from cheap borrowing from the Federal Reserve. The Wall Street bailout continues.

Decades ago, there was a saying "What's good for GM is good for America." Prior to the financial crisis, when stock markets were booming and 401(k)s were surging, the updated version was "What's good for Wall Street is good for America."

It's now clear that that was not true.

In Detroit, automakers pay smart people a good living to design and build new cars and trucks. On Wall Street, investment banks pay very smart people multimillion-dollar salaries to create ever-more-complex investment vehicles that have no connection to a real product and add no value to society.

In the past 30 years, financial sector profits have grown as a percentage of the national economy just as manufacturing jobs have been lost or shipped overseas.

It's time to reverse those trends. America will be better off if fewer of its best and brightest go to Wall Street — and more go into science, education, engineering, medicine, sustainable energy technology and manufacturing.