Fat cats stole $100,000,000 every day from suckers like you and me

If that's not a racket, I don't know what is.

(First of all, I want to give props to this guy, who called this at least a week before the story broke. He needs to take the word "legally" out of the headline, though. There is nothing legal about what Goldman was/is doing.)

[Why, oh why, do I have to do this every year?]

Wall Street jocks only paid themselves $20 billion in bonuses this year, a year in which they lost untold billions of dollars and came hat-in-hand to us, hardworking (when we can find work) taxpayers, asking for a $700 billion handout.

Seemingly just to rub it in, they rewarded themselves for successfully carrying out this great snow job with friggin' BONUSES!!! Worth $20 BILLION!?!?

W

T

F!?!?!?!!!!

Wall Street's meltdown was the result of massive fraud, incredible corruption, and endless incompetence. As I explained in many other posts, these guys were pulling money out of their butts. Anyone who knows anything about Wall Street knows that the people running it are pretty much a bunch of asshole Ivy League jocks who fell into their lucrative stations in life without knowing dick but knowing Dick, their dad's tennis buddy and fellow Princeton alum.

*sigh*

Before expounding upon the current dollar bubble, let me wax philosophical on herds of monkeys...

When will people evolve? Biologists classify us as monkeys, and we are monkey-like, but you'd think we would have evolved beyond "Monkey see, monkey do," by now, especially where money and investments are concerned.

Bubbles are caused by herd-like behavior, and apparently monkeys move in herds. Everybody buys tulips, tech stocks, houses, or whatever, and the prices of those things skyrocket until people look down and get scared (or see the opportunity to take profits), shortly after which point a mad rush for the exits ensues. At that point, the bubble pops.

Wall Street bonuses were down in 2007 to an average of only $180,420 per worker. Oh, the poor dears! Only a paltry $33 billion in bonuses were handed out to the Wall Street fat cats. This is the thanks they get for giving us the sub-prime mortgage crisis and causing our 401(k) accounts to shrivel like a ballplayer's steroid-addled testicles!?! The outrage! The injustice of it all! How are these guys supposed to pay for their $500 Kobe beef lunches! How are they supposed to keep up the maintenance on their yachts, to say nothing of their second and third homes in Aspen and St. Tropez! And the children! Think of the children -- those $60,000 annual tuitions for private schools don't pay themselves, you know. My God, with paltry little bonuses like these, the poor Wall Street dudes may not be able to retire comfortably until they're 34! It's a travesty, I tell you, and a tragedy!

[Update: We now know the exact figure of the multi-million-dollar package awarded to Chuck Prince, who wiped $36 billion off Citigroup's balance sheet -- $140 million. Disgusting.]

CitiGroup CEO Chuck Prince resigned yesterday. Hmmm, another quiet Sunday afternoon resignation of a Wall Street prince... a trend emerges. Why do these guys resign on Sunday afternoon? Do they think nobody will notice? Wall Street seems to have noticed -- the Dow is down 83 points at the time of this writing. That rate cut last week really did its job, didn't it! Those guys at the Fed sure are smart!

[Check out the date this was posted -- boy, can I call 'em or what!]

Curious that Bear Stearns chose a Sunday afternoon to announce the firing of president and co-COO Warren Spector. What do they know that we don't? Considering Spector's amazing performance in making a couple billion dollars (that we know about) vanish, the safe answer would be, "A hell of a lot." Yeah, they prolly know sumpthin' we don't.