So some dozens of men and women, many of them relatively young, graduates of our best business schools, stars in the business firmament of the giant financial institution they worked for, which giant institution was now receiving billions of bailout taxpayer dollars, accepted large bonuses under the terms of the contracts they were offered by the leaders of said giant institution in their exquisitely furnished offices in the world class temples of grandeur they built around the world as monuments to themselves and their success, which success delighted the peoples' elected representatives who were dazzled by their wealth and fame and success and the political dollars dripping from their till, to the point where where they neither saw nor smelled anything wrong in the institution's business practices over the years, and so in a sense officiated over the impending doom that was to overwhelm the economy of which they were the ostensible custodians.
Like raising a thumb to block out the sun, let's take back some 70 odd bonuses and fail on all sides to see the systemic disease that got us here: short-term thinking; the lunatic need for a profit statement this quarter considerably larger than the last, at the expense of every other value.