Okay, we knew about the bridge tournaments, and we knew about the golf. But smoking pot?

Kate Kelly of the Wall Street Journal delivers a devastating description of exactly how much the chief executive of Bear Stearns fiddled while two of the firm's hedge funds burned. During July, when the credit crunch was starting to squeeze painfully, the C.E.O., James Cayne, spent "10 of the 21 workdays out of the office, either at the bridge event or golfing, according to golf, bridge, and hotel records," the Journal reports.

Much of that time at the bridge table or on the links was without a cell phone or email access.

And the Journal details allegations that Cayne, 73 and a noted cigar smoker, sometimes smoked marijuana at bridge tournaments.

One unidentified fellow bridge player told the Journal that she shared a joint with Cayne at a tournament in 2004. In an interview with the Journal, Cayne denied emphatically that the 2004 incident had taken place, but he declined to comment generally on allegations of marijuana use.

Other Bear executives contend that Cayne remains fully engaged with the operations and risk management at the firm.

But the article today is certain to renew the questions about the future of Bear and why its board continues to back the chief executive. So far, Warren Spector, the former president of Bear, has been the highest-ranking company executive to take the fall for the firm's troubles.

The ousters of Phil Purcell at Morgan Stanley and now Stan O'Neal at Merrill Lynch show that even boards on Wall Street that are cozy with the chief now understand that they have a greater obligation to shareholders when executives take risks and fail.

Cayne was seen as buying time with a recent deal with Citic Securities of China. The clock has now resumed ticking.