welfare for the wealthy

Wall Street types don't live in ghettos, barrios, or the hollows of Appalachia, but they do inhabit environments that are sealed off socially from the rest of the world—the Hamptons on Long Island; Manhattan's Fifth Avenue; Greenwich, Conn.

Because they rarely interact with people of middle-class means (save the odd doctor, lawyer, or interior designer), they have become woefully out of touch with the solid bourgeois values that made America great.

Wall Street titans are almost incapable of seeing the problem with taking nine-figure payouts in years in which their stocks plummet. There's just a total disconnect between the compensation and the responsibility for their actions.

"Modern Wall Street is a system," says Charles Morris—a former Chase banker and author of The Trillion Dollar Meltdown—"that rewards crazy risk-taking in the short term without regard for the long-term consequences."

Conservative critics constantly carp that the culture of poverty has encouraged a sense of dependency on Washington. Yet it vaulted into action to save the bankers from their own disastrous bets. When Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, approached insolvency, the Feds orchestrated JPMorgan's acquisition of it.

As part of the Bear Stearns deal, it agreed to lend $30 billion against assets of dubious provenance. And guess who bears the risk if that $30 billion can't be paid back? You and me.