I said long-term rational-self interest.
How were the bankers doing that? The bigger the fraud, the harder they fell. How is Bernie Madoff doing?
Is former Merill-Lynch CEO Thain a fraud? Not exactly. But he didn't fight a principled battle against all regulations. What I'm saying is that it's much better to be like John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T (one of the few that didn't get into subprime as a matter of principle) than it is to be like anyone else. Allison is great, and he did great, and he's free of any and all guilt! Everyone (CEOs included) that fall short of that ideal pay a price (remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch, ever, in anything) proportional to their deviation from the moral ideal (set by Objectivism).
You should not assume that Thain and other bankers are happy just because they have "a lot" of money. Nor should you assume that they have the skills to keep their money "in the family" for several generations. That implies a level of familiarity with their individual philosophies that you simply do not have! (And to be honest, I don't know either, apart from what you can tell about them from reading the paper.)