When business leaders failed in the past, through greed or ineptitude, they felt humiliation, they resigned, they took their punishment, and once in a while they jumped out the window in the ultimate attempt at public redemption.

Today, they take billions of dollars of our tax money to cover their looting and actually convince us they not only deserve it but are making a valiant attempt to rescue our economy.

What is most irritating about watching the crumbling of the American economy is that it is portrayed as something akin to a natural disaster. Like Hurricane Ike pummeling the Texas coast, the collapse of Wall Street just sort of happened.

Some call it simply a normal correction in the free market. Not quite. It was unbridled greed, a whole industry based on selling each other bad consumer debts, and sleazebag predators selling homes, usually with falsified documents, to people who couldn’t possibly afford them.

All the while our leaders in Congress and the White House sat on their hands, mocking anyone who might suggest a little oversight of financial institutions — the kind given to commercial banks — might be a good idea.

Now, watching the horror caused by their deregulation and privatization mantra, they look for other explanations. Some even place the blame with the poor saps losing their homes. Like blaming a rape victim, they argue all these dumb, average people lost their moral sense of right and wrong, were looking for an easy way up and bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford.

Actually, people’s morals don’t seem to have changed much — most still try to do the right thing, want a little better life and really believe the person across the desk giving them a loan is doing it responsibly. What changed is the guy across the desk knew there were no rules, no one was watching, and everyone was getting very rich, very quick.

What else has changed is we don’t even look for anyone to hold responsible when train wrecks of such magnitude occur. And we’re barely looking for ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Instead, Freddie and Fannie and AIG and Bear Stearns and the rest get billions in tax money, the economy continues to sink as we wait to see how many more companies were plundered, and everyone who had a hand in it is averting their gaze, pretending these things just happen.

All of this might be an interesting spectacle except that the colossal greed, corruption and abandonment of government oversight hurts mostly the retiree in Waldorf and the young family trying to get a start in Springfield.

Really, I think we would all feel a little better if a few people fell on their swords.

Or, if need be, we could give them a nudge.

Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com.