This week, the chief executives of seven of the country's eight largest and most powerful banks—Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and State Street—convened in Washington to testify before the House Financial Services Committee. The lone missing CEO, Wells Fargo's Tim Sloan, had a good excuse for his absence: He sat alone before the committee on March 12, when he endured four devastating hours of bipartisan excoriation for his leadership of a scandal-ridden institution that forked over billions in civil penalties and restitution for its various crimes over the past few years. Two weeks later, Sloan abruptly announced his retirement; the timing of this move, officially, is a coincidence.

In previous Republican-controlled congresses, the committee's hearings served mostly as opportunities for GOP lawmakers to grouse about the excesses of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its infuriating efforts to protect ordinary Americans from predatory lending practices. By law, at least one person had to issue an indignant call for the Bureau's abolition before its then chair, Texas's Jeb Hensarling, could bring each de facto complaining session to a close.

With California Democrat Maxine Waters holding the gavel, however, the proceedings have taken on a decidedly different tone. During Wednesday's hearing, lawmakers reserved most of their ire for JPMorgan Chase CEO and almost-presidential-candidate Jamie Dimon, who commands an astonishing $31 million each year. CEO pay has skyrocketed in all industries over the past few decades, but still, Dimon's $31 million figure yields a 381:1 ratio between his pay and that of the median Chase employee, according to a Yahoo Finance analysis, which was somehow still not the highest in the room; that distinction goes to Citigroup, which required a nine-figure taxpayer-funded bailout in 2008 and today boasts a ratio of 486:1.

Freshman representative Katie Porter, a former law professor and Elizabeth Warren protégé who served as California's independent monitor of banks during the housing crisis, confronted Dimon with the simple fact that many of his multi-trillion-dollar institution's entry-level employees do not make enough money to break even. Porter shared the story of a single mother who runs a deficit of $567, asking Dimon how that woman should manage the shortfall while holding down full-time employment. Dimon, after questioning the accuracy of Porter's math, described himself as "wholly sympathetic" and offered an optimistic bootstraps narrative, noting that the employee might one day have his job if she keeps climbing the corporate ladder. He did not elaborate on how the infinitesimal chance to one day make $31 million each year might help pay childcare bills that were due two weeks ago.

Porter, perhaps irritated at Dimon's insinuation that she did not have receipts, demonstrated after the hearing's conclusion that she does, in fact, possess receipts. (Note: Calling out former law professors is generally an ill-advised gambit.)

Texas congressman Al Green noted that in addition to being fabulously wealthy titans of the financial universe, all seven of the bank CEOs seated before him were middle-aged white men. Perhaps more importantly, when he asked who among them believed their immediate successor might be a woman and/or a person of color, not one of them raised a hand. (The Great Recession had a disproportionate impact on communities of color, especially in areas flooded with subprime mortgage loans; black families, for example, lost 48 percent of their wealth during that period.) Later, five of the witnesses opined that their institutions would be led by a woman or person of color within a decade, to which Green responded, “Without giving the commentary that I would dearly like to give, I’ll move on.”

During her allotted time for questioning, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Dimon whether more bank C-suite types should have gone to jail for their roles in facilitating the 2008 foreclosure crisis—particularly in light of the fact, as she noted, that kids in New York City can end up in jail for jumping subway turnstiles because they can't afford MetroCards. (Last year, a Financial Times analysis identified only 47 bankers who served prison time for recession-related crimes.) In 2013, JPMorgan Chase reached a record-breaking $13 billion settlement with federal prosecutors in order to settle its criminal liability, so Ocasio-Cortez's inquiry was a rather pointed one.