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If that's right, it remains to ask whether this view of the bailouts was justified. Were the CEOs and top executives of the big banks and investment firms really to blame for the financial crisis? Many of the executives didn't think so. Testifying before congressional committees investigating the financial crisis, they insisted they had done all they could with the information available to them. The former chief executive of Bear Stearns, a Wall Street investment firm that collapsed in 2008, said he'd pondered long and hard wherher he could have done anyhing differently. He concluded he'd done all he could. "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything... that would have made a difference to the situation we faced."
Other CEOs of failed companies agreed, insisting that they were victims "of a financial tsunami" beyond their control. A similar attitude extended to young readers, who had a hard time understanding the public's fury about their bonuses. "There's no sympathy for us anywhere," a Wall Street trader told a reporter for vanity fair. "but it's not as if we weren't working hard."
The tsunami metaphor became part of bailout vernacular, especially in financial circles. If the executives are right that the failure of their companies was due to larger economic forces, not their own dcisions, this would explain why they didn't express the remorse that Senator Grassley wanted to hear. But it also raises a far-reacing question about failure, success, and justice.
If big, systemic economic forces account for the disastrous loses of 2008 and 2009, couldn't it be argued that they also account for the dazzling gains of earlier years? if the weather is to blame for the bad years , how can it be that the talent, wisdon, and hard work of bankers, traders, and Wall Street executives are responsible for the stupendous returns that occurred when the sun was shining?
Confronted with public outrage over paying bonuses for failure, the CEOs argued that financial returns are not wholly their own doing, but the product of forces beyond their control. They may have a point.