Miracle On Wall Street

Here’s a nice human interest story just in time for the holidays. An informal poll of 98 Wall Street bankers conducted by Esquire magazine found that two them — count them, two — thought their bonuses were too high and they actually deserved less. Forget that 56% thought they deserved more, or that the largest banks set aside more money for bonuses than the GDP of thirteen foreign countries combined, and that unemployment remains chronically high with no real prospect of improvement. Forget that our economy is in the dump and that the savvy businessmen who created this mess, rather than attempting to change it (or being sent to prison), are carrying on as usual, swinging from the chandeliers and pissing in the sink like a horde of billionaire Visigoths with no thought for tomorrow. No, let’s focus on the positives. In this case, a genuine Christmas miracle.

The next time you feel like taking a pitchfork to the banksters, remember there are at least two of them out there who have some measure of decency. They’ve obviously reached that stage of development when the first faint stirrings of morality begin to emerge. Kudos for that. They must have come from two parent homes. Unfortunately, they’re still not fully adult. When asked how they planned to spend all that money, one of the two answered, “A big-ass Mac and a lot of taxi cabs.”

A big-ass Mac and a lot of taxi cabs. Chalk up another victory for trickle-down economics! And shake your head once more at the mind-numbing immaturity of the American aristocracy.