If you were an employee at Gravity Payments, already making $70,000, how would you feel about employees who made half what you make suddenly making the same amount as you? In April 2019, the CEOs of seven of the largest U.S. banks were called to testify before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee.

(Missing was the CEO of Wells Fargo, Timothy Sloan, who had resigned weeks earlier as a result of the scandal described in Chapter 1.)

Following the economic recession in 2008–2009, U.S. government action, including financial bailouts, helped many of these banks avoid serious financial difficulties, including bankruptcy. The government’s reasoning at this time was that many of these banks were “too big to fail.” Now, ten years after that crisis, the congressional committee was examining how the banks were performing.