A recent article in the New York Times noted that Wall Street investment banks, which had cut compensation for their employees over the last year, had not begun to increase compensation back to the 2007 or pre-crisis level.

To use a modern colloquialism: “Really?”

It seems that all too often as of late people have been attacking Wall Street. It is easy, popular, and let’s be honest – fun. While I’m all for doing what is popular, in this case popular happens to also be what is right. I’m not arguing we should not have bailed out the Wall Street firms. I don’t fully understand everything that happened with the economy, but from what I understand a bankruptcy from one of the large banks or investment firms would be disastrous.

It seems hard to believe, first, that companies who had benefited from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, directly or indirectly, would have the audacity to increase employee compensation from “generous” to “obscene.” If these companies require government money or a government credit line to stay in business, they should be compensated like government employees – reasonably.

There are those who would argue that these people, these bankers, deserve generous compensation. The “free market” determines compensation levels and this is what it has done for investment bankers. I know of no other profession, save for meteorology, where one can consistently be wrong and still be employed. The investment banks employees were rewarded with generous compensation, as if their “financial innovations” were valuable. Those are the same innovations that trashed the economy.

The problem in this situation is not the free market. Not at all. Rather, the problem is that the investment bank system is not adequately regulated. A market can be free with reasonable regulations, and in this case it seems as though common sense regulations on the level of risk that can be taken with other people’s money may be in order. The free market works when there is a system of disincentive for failure. It’s hard to see where such an incentive existed in situation where leading a company into the ground came with a five million dollar bonus.

I’m not advocating for socialism. We need innovators in the financial markets, and we need to make sure that government, more or less, allows the markets to function. It just seems like there should, of course, some accountability in the market and some limits as to the risks that can be taken. After eight years of advocacy for unregulated markets, it is clear they don’t work any better than gambling. It’s time for President Obama to advocate for smart regulation that will promote growth and prevent catastrophe.