A little bit, yeah. The leaders of those businesses made promises to people, and they failed to uphold them.
If I promise to pay you back a loan, it's understood that the interest rate you'll charge me is related to the risk of my defaulting and that the option exists.
This isn't usually some freak unforeseeable accident. The 2007 crisis was caused as much by people overlevering themselves to take advantage of a situation as it was by predatory lending practices and greed/fraud at the I Bank level. But people love to put all the blame on the banks, and none on themselves for not being prudent.
Then why does the borrower have moral culpability in addition to financial culpability, while the lender only takes a financial haircut.
If I take my car to a mechanic am I expected to know as much about my car as the mechanic? Do I tear down and redo/inspect any work they do to my car? If I go to a mechanic and ask them if it's okay to do something dangerous to my car and they go ahead and do it, I'd say the mechanic is way more on the hook morally than the idiot driver.
Similarly if I go and ask for a 1,000,000 USD mortgage when I'm only making $20,000 USD a year and have no savings or investments and the bank gives it me... You're saying both me and bank are on equal moral footing? You would then have to ask what incentive the bank had to give me the money. Either they are greedy and wanted to charge a super high rate or they intended to pass the buck and sell the loan which can be fraud if they lie about my credit worthiness to the next buyer of the loan.
Yes, I blame the supposed experts, not the folks they suckered.
Morality is a human defined concept. We also only seem to apply it to individuals, a company declares bankruptcy, fires a large number of employees and then rights itself society shrugs but if a person does it we cast shame on them.
Life is short, if I dig myself into a whole with the best of intentions, I am not going to spend years living a lesser life and condemning my kids to that same lesser life if there is a reset button.
I don't think that it's right for a company to do what you describe wantonly. I absolutely think we should shame companies when they mistreat people.
And what you're describing with your children is selfish, but it's an understandable selfishness - your children are of course going to be a higher priority to you than society at large, as it is with almost all parents.
Anyway, my idea about the obligations of fulfilling one's debts seems to be an unpopular one, and I'm sure I won't change anyone's mind, especially if they've chosen to take on a lot of debt themselves, so I'll stop here.
VCs invest in opportunity, not promises.
But regardless, you should try to make your investors whole, if at all possible. I view that as your ethical responsibility as someone who receives investment.