The recession  with its yawning gap between the bonus class on the one hand and the foreclosed upon and newly jobless on the other  is changing that. It’s not merely that Americans have, at least temporarily, abandoned the hope that they’ll earn scads of money. It’s the widespread sense that winners in this economy are produced by a game that’s rigged.

Which is why the response to last week’s earnings bonanza has been a mix of, among other things, bafflement and anger. If these companies can return to the festivities so quickly, were they really having the near-death experience they and the government claimed? And if taxpayers risked their money when they backstopped Wall Street’s misadventures, why aren’t they sharing in the upside now that the party has started again? And did these companies have the time to rethink the risk culture that landed us in this jam in the first place?

In private, Wall Street executives have questions of their own.

Like, wait a sec  isn’t returning to profitability exactly what you wanted us to do? And if the nation’s circulatory system of money is beginning to flow again, isn’t that good news? Oh and by the way, we are paying you back.

It’s telling that from politicians, there’s been mostly silence.

Neither Representative Barney Frank nor Senator Chris Dodd  respectively, the Democrats who lead the House and Senate committees that handle banks  issued press releases about those earnings last week, according members of their staffs. Neither returned a call for this article.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, sounded like it was searching for the seam between cautious optimism and cautious skepticism. Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was quoted in Time magazine saying that “the president continues to have concerns that compensation will be based on risky behavior instead of performance.”

But class resentment can be a powerful tool in politics, and you don’t need to stoke it explicitly to enjoy its upsides. House Democrats have proposed a 5.4 percent surtax on those earning more than $1 million as a means of underwriting health care reform.

Whatever the wisdom of this idea, it is easier to imagine it catching on now that Goldman has posted its largest quarterly profit in 140 years  enough to set aside more than $11 billion for bonuses, with the year only half over.