People take risks, they bear the responsibility for those risks, and they're supposed to learn from them and do better next time, and that's how a healthy market grows.
What's going on here is that we're in uncharted territory, a world where the Fed and the Treasury are making up the rules as they go along, where accountability is being ignored and a world where the government bails out Bear Stearns and its creditors rather than letting those who have been reckless learn a lesson for the next time.