Recent history has not been kind to James E. Cayne, the CEO who has been blamed for the collapse of Bear Stearns, the investment bank that was sold at a bargain basement price to JP Morgan Chase earlier this year.

In a classic fiddling-while-Rome-burns story, the Wall Street Journal traced the activities of James Cayne, the CEO of Bear Stearns Cos. this summer.

While units of Bear Stearns, an investment and banking powerhouse, were collapsing because of the credit crisis in the subprime mortgage market, Cayne was out of reach for hours at a time, the Journal reported Thursday.

Not surprisingly – he’s a CEO after all – Cayne was incommunicado at times on the golf course.

But at other times he was, hold on to your hats, playing bridge.