Wall Street executives said Wednesday they underestimated the severity of the 2008 financial crisis and apologized for risky behavior and poor decisions. They also defended their bonus and compensation practices to a skeptical commission investigating what caused the collapse.

Americans are furious and “have a right to be” about the hefty bonuses banks paid out after getting billions of dollars in federal help, the commission’s chairman told chief executives of four major banks, all survivors of the deepest and longest recession since the Depression.

As the hearings opened before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chairman Phil Angelides pledged “a full and fair inquiry into what brought our financial system to its knees.”

The panel began its yearlong inquiry amid rising public fury over bailouts and bankers’ pay.

“We understand the anger felt by many citizens,” said Brian Moynihan, chief executive and president of Bank of America. “We are grateful for the taxpayer assistance we have received.”

Over the course of the crisis, we as an industry caused a lot of damage,” Moynihan said.

With Bank of America having repaid its bailout money, he said “the vast majority of our employees played no role in the economic crisis” and do not deserve to be penalised with lower compensation. Moynihan said compensation levels will be higher next year than they were in 2008 — but not at levels reached before the financial meltdown.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said most of his employees took “significant cuts in compensation” in 2008. He said his company would continue to pay people in a “responsible and disciplined manner” to attract and retain top talent.

Still, Dimon said, “We did make mistakes and there were things we could have done better.”

John Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley, said the crisis was “a powerful wake-up call for this firm.” He said he didn’t take a bonus in 2009 and that his bank has overhauled its compensation practices to discourage “excessive risk-taking.”

The other executives also said their companies had tightened bonus policies, including provisions to “claw back” some of the money when performance faltered.

Angelides, a former Democratic state treasurer of California, questioned Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein about packaging soured assets into bond-like securities and selling them to investors — even as Goldman Sachs was “shorting” the same securities, or making inside bets they would fail. These included risky mortgages that were extended to borrowers with poor credit records and helped cause the home-loan bust.