Given the mess into which Wall Street's poor stewardship has sunk the US, the phrase “financial industry statesman” will be seen by the American public as a laughable oxymoron for some time. But there is a real risk that the justified hit to Wall Street's reputation will taint the standing of business more generally unless non-financial leaders wake up and take unconventional action. The perils of timidity at this moment are high. If business as a whole (and not just finance) is discredited by today's meltdown, the drive to renew American capitalism could give rise to steps that burden the US economy for years.

To avoid this fate, far-sighted business leaders need to weigh in now on three subjects on which they have been notably absent: executive pay; the need for an updated “social contract” that fits 21st-century realities; and a strategy to make service jobs that cannot be offshored a path to the middle class. These are no longer political questions that can be left to Washington trade associations or viewed as a distraction from the “real work” of running one's business, because failure to address them will fuel a backlash that affects every company's licence to operate. Let us take them in turn.

. The firestorm over bonuses at AIG, the insurer rescued by the US government last year, made clear that we are in the midst of an overdue “cultural correction” – that is, justified rage at the disconnect between any reasonable notion of “merit” or “performance” and financial reward. It is in the enlightened self-interest of business to acknowledge that it is both wrong and politically unsustainable to have chief executives routinely accumulating entrepreneurial-style wealth without taking entrepreneurial-style risk – or worse, while presiding over shoddy results or the actual demise of their companies.