@ the disparity between CXO pay and average worker pay is much higher in the US than in other countries (esp. Japan).

@ Also as for Japan, the people most in need of rehabilitation are entrepreneurs, especially of SMEs, who otherwise would have ruined lives after bankruptcy.

@ Public companies face special moral hazards because of the stock option-compensated executive team. Start-up or SME bankruptcy and self-interested mismanagement of public companies are not the same thing.

@ Most of the public ire at this moment is with financial services execs, whose behavior was particularly arrogant, as well as being fantastically stupid. (See, e.g., Janet Tavakoli’s Structured Finance and Collateralized Debt Obligations, 2nd ed.(2008).) As for the auto execs, it’s true that they too have behaved stupidly and insensitively; though I think peoples’ eagerness to see those companies collapse takes too lightly the impact on huge numbers of workers and others. Still, I don’t think forgiveness of the stupid is as important in the auto company case as is compassion for the relatively innocent.

As for “Enormous pay packages [being] cited as the fruits of a system where any dream could come true,” this was a false impression, fostered more often than not by the beneficiaries of those enormous pay packages. What about the dreams of the line employees, for example — were they more likely to come true because the CEO was taking huge tranches of cash on joining, running, and leaving the company?

In sum, I think one should be more careful to distinguish between small company and big public company issues, and also not to wax unduly sentimental about the loss of a false narrative.