Norms of what was “fair” changed too: the executives thought little of taking a bigger slice of the corporate pie, awarding themselves large amounts even as they claimed they had to fire workers and reduce wages to keep the firm alive. In some circles, so engrained did these schizophrenic attitudes to “fairness” become that early in the Great Recession an Obama administration official could say, with a straight face, that it was necessary to honor AIG bonuses, even for the officials who had led the company to need a $182 billion bailout, because of the sanctity of contracts; minutes later he
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