Its not their lack of restraint that is at issue, its what belief they demonstrate themselves to hold with this particular lack of restraint. Given the events that proceeded this story, wrt the financial sector, its seems quite likely that these beliefs demonstrated in private are in fact the ones they truly hold and which they act upon. After all the original story was about the fate of newbie financial professionals post-Crash. Maybe you could discount this behavior in the time before the Crash, but we have clear and well known evidence of the results of the actions of these people, and then we see them partying and laughing about how they avoided any significant consquences.