After the global debt-bubble debacle made itself clear last year, many reasonable people said that markets — and capitalism — had failed. Financial markets had proved themselves irrational and unable to distribute resources effectively. So, the government should do more of this work itself. As the shock of 2008 has receded, this conclusion has stuck.

Last week’s Goldman Sachs earnings announcement seemed to add more evidence to the verdict. What sense does it make that Goldman could generate a more than 20 percent return for its shareholders without those shareholders worrying about the risks Goldman took to earn its profits? And why would any lender trust Goldman with the money it must borrow, when it seems that Goldman is taking more risk with every dollar of borrowed money?

Didn’t anyone learn his lesson?

Moreover, what sense does it make for Goldman to pay employees an expected average of $700,000 apiece this year — more than it paid during the debt bubble — when national unemployment is nearly 10 percent?

Yesterday, a top adviser to President Obama, David Axelrod, called the expected bonuses “offensive,” and further said that financial firms should stop their lobbying against new financial regulations. “They ought to think through what they are doing,” he said, because “the United States government . . . and taxpayers came to their defense” last year. “They have responsibilities, and they ought to meet those responsibilities.”

Yet Goldman and its competitors are acting perfectly rationally within the irrational regulatory and market environment Washington has created for them.

Washington has made it clear that Goldman and other big or complicated financial firms are too big to fail. The firms’ lenders know that they are insulated from losses, so they lend cheaply and disinterestedly. Shareholders, on the other hand, know that they can take losses, so they demand high short-term returns as compensation for that risk. Employees are shareholders, and receive much of their bonuses in stock, so they, too, demand more.

Wall Street can thrive while Main Street withers for a simple reason: Wall Street has partial immunity from market discipline, a priceless advantage that no other industry enjoys.

Washington can fix the problem by creating a rational regulatory environment. As markets adjusted to such an environment, financial firms would tailor their rational behavior to respond to the markets’ new signals. Banks and investment firms would not be able to borrow as cheaply if lenders thought their money was at risk, and would not be able to earn the government-distorted profits that are creating the “offensive” bonuses.

Congress, upon President Obama’s request, must ensure that no financial firm is so big or opaque that it is partly immune from market forces. Congress should regulate derivatives and other financial instruments, for example, to prevent companies from making hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of impossible promises with negligible cash down, as AIG did before 2008, endangering the entire financial system and making government rescue inevitable.

Until Washington acts — and ignores special-interest lobbying, instead of protesting too much about it — no amount of faux government outrage, whining, or bullying will stop firms such as Goldman from behaving rationally in an irrational world to maximize their own best interests.

– Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, is author of the forthcoming After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street — and Washington.