You might view Philip Milne as one of the many casualties of the current financial crunch, another top exec who lost his job because of his company’s disastrous investments in subprime mortgages.

Three Wall Street executives were held up by a Congressional Democrats today as poster boys for executive compensation run amok.

Two of the three - E. Stanley O’Neal, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, head of Citigroup - lost their jobs last fall after the collapse of the subprime mortgage market which they had once ridden to huge profits.

In the end, it would seem that the bottom line at Bear Stearns Cos. for James Cayne was the bottom line.

The investment bank’s leader went through public relations hell in November when The Wall Street Journal reported that he had spent a lot of time playing either golf or bridge in July while his company was struggling with losses in its sub-prime mortgage funds.