The details come courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. In an extraordinary fine piece of reporting, reporters Mark Maremont, John Hechinger and Maurice Tamman write that: 

The credit bubble has burst. The economy is tanking. Investors in the U.S. stock market have lost more than $9 trillion since its peak a year ago.

But in industries at the center of the crisis, plenty of top officials managed to emerge with substantial fortunes.

Fifteen corporate chieftains of large home-building and financial-services firms each reaped more than $100 million in cash compensation and proceeds from stock sales during the past five years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Four of those executives, including the heads of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., ran companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection or seen their share prices fall more than 90% from their peak

You want to swallow a staggering number:

The study, which examined filings at 120 public companies in such sectors as banking, mortgage finance, student lending, stock brokerage and home building, showed that top executives and directors of the firms cashed out a total of more than $21 billion during the period

$21 BILLION!

Let me give you a reference to what these numbers mean. If you counted up to these numbers, counting one number per second, this is how long it would take:

1 million=11 days
100 million=3.1 years
1 billion=31.6 years
100 billion=3,158 years
700 billion=22,182 years

This is robbery. Most of it was legal robbery--playing very fast and loose with the rules, ignoring basic standards of business practice and taking advantage of lots of people who were desperate, often because their paychecks haven't shown any income growth in years.

Maybe we can't jail these folks or take away their mansions, yachts and other toys, but we should at least restrict their compensation and ban them from engaging in any financial responsibilities. Why are they still around anyway?