I agree that there were larger, diffuse consequences for a great many people, but the mass tort system isn't really designed to remedy that kind of thing.
The most appropriate mechanism for that is government action. There was such an investigation, and it did find wrongdoing, but the ultimate response was so feeble as to be meaningless. The DOJ sued the tech companies under the Sherman Antitrust act which reads in part:
Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
After filing suit, the government settled the case in exchange for a promise not to violate the law for five years. Given that they were already obligated to follow the law, and not just for five years, one wonders what the point was.
I was very disappointed not to see prison sentences for executives and other fiduciaries in the 2008 financial scandals. Weren't those used in the 80s S&L crisis? I understand that large corporate penalties can hurt society or innocent employees, but we can still deter bad behavior if we hold individuals accountable. Of course the rich will always be more likely to evade justice, but I feel like 2008 was more blatant than usual and sent a strong message that if you're rich you can act with impunity.
So am I, but look at the vitriolic 'class warfare' narrative that opponents of the administration have been carrying on for the last 6 years. Every time the government makes a bank pay out money to settle accusations of financial asset misrepresentation (eg some of the shenanigans around mortgage-backed securities), the Wall Street Journal and its ilk wax wroth about 'government shakedowns' and so forth. So imagine the response if the DoJ launched criminal prosecutions of big bank CEOs in addition to fraudsters like Bernie Madoff - there would be cries about a communist takeover and what-all else.
It's also true that the regulatory environment was sufficiently lax, and the chain of responsibility sufficiently convoluted, that it would have been hard to make any such prosecutions stick. Financial crime is generally slow to come to trial anyway because it's so hard to prove intent beyond a reasonable doubt, and so hard to pin it on any individual in a sufficiently large organization. As well as (possibly) leading to political upheaval and (definitely) causing a major chilling effect on business activity in the middle of the worst financial crisis in almost everyone's living memory, it would have been ethically, legally, and strategically problematic to bring charges that would not be easily provable at trial. If the CEO of (imaginary) MegaBank had been put on trial and the case collapsed, it would have poised every other prosecution for 20 years. That's not rational, but at the national level prosecutions have a big political dimension, there's just no getting away from it.
My read is that the administration opted to go the route of administrative penalties with the twin goals of maintaining relative stability in the financial industry and getting Dodd-Frank passed on congress to provide much stronger regulatory options for the longer term. It's not an emotionally satisfying strategy, but a pragmatic one taken in the interests of continuity. I would have preferred a top-to-bottom shakeout of the financial industry, and maybe a change in the economic and social order that would result, but the problem with revolutionary changes is that once begun it's hard to stop them turning. Look at the French revolution; half the instigators ended up on the guillotine themselves and 10 years after France had got rid of a king they ended up with an emperor.
The most appropriate mechanism for that is government action. There was such an investigation, and it did find wrongdoing, but the ultimate response was so feeble as to be meaningless. The DOJ sued the tech companies under the Sherman Antitrust act which reads in part:
Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
After filing suit, the government settled the case in exchange for a promise not to violate the law for five years. Given that they were already obligated to follow the law, and not just for five years, one wonders what the point was.