On the cover of NYT, we see something that looks like the truth:

"...[Our] investments were not meant to fail." This is not the tip of an iceberg; this, to use the words of a wonderful song by Peggy Lee, is "all there is." In that caption we see the simple ground from which Wall Street's morality grows and branches into a monstrous money tree: right is to win; wrong is to fail. It's not what they did that matters (content), but the results (form). If investors had succeeded, had continued the accumulation of stunning profits without collapsing the system, then no wrong would have been done.