Held captive at walletpoint

Upon reflection, this article didn't piss me off nearly as much as it should have. Perhaps the nadir comes when one anonymous, bailed-out banker whines that salaries of well over $500,000 in cash were necessary because "A lot of our folks have second and third homes and alimony payments..." Who are these people that think like this? That work for banks that have literally brought the world economy to its knees with their greed and incompetence, that see headlines about record foreclosures and evictions every day, and still feel comfortable arguing for their massive salaries because, God forbid they have to sell one of their three homes!? What country do they think they live in?

Perhaps Chris Lehmann is right, and it really is time for us to clean out the cash-swollen gutters of Wall Street, but I can't help but be pessimistic. Not because I'm worried about retribution leading to a talent drain - one Wall Street lawyer quoted in the piece says, "If people in these industries — which are a main American export — see that Congress can jerk them around whenever they want, they’re going to stop going into these businesses, just the way people have stopped becoming doctors." and I can't help but hope that he's right (also, by the way? You people are waaaay less essential to society than doctors. Fuck you. Seriously.) But because they've got us by the throat, and they know it:

Why obsess over $20 million or $30 million in extra payouts at businesses that have billions in other expenses and where the government had billions at risk? What if some of those people really did leave? Even if replacing them would just cause a hiccup or two, the risk wasn’t worth it.