Krugman points the metacarpal of shame at Wall Street again and it’s time to expand that a bit:

The financial services industry has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income over the past generation, making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet, at this point, it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it. And it’s not just a matter of money: the vast riches achieved by those who managed other people’s money have had a corrupting effect on our society as a whole.

Let’s start with those paychecks. Last year, the average salary of employees in “securities, commodity contracts, and investments” was more than four times the average salary in the rest of the economy. Earning a million dollars was nothing special, and even incomes of $20 million or more were fairly common. The incomes of the richest Americans have exploded over the past generation, even as wages of ordinary workers have stagnated; high pay on Wall Street was a major cause of that divergence.

But surely those financial superstars must have been earning their millions, right? No, not necessarily. The pay system on Wall Street lavishly rewards the appearance of profit, even if that appearance later turns out to have been an illusion.

Yes, Wall Street and the Greenspan Fed led the parade. Yes, people who raised the issue of executive vs. worker compensation in the US, compared to other societies (and historical norms) were met with derision for the past quarter century. After all, critics were just envious, right?

Not.

The reality is many American streets, wherever the local financial businesses were situated, were involved in the profits-over-people madness. There were few George Baileys living angel-guided lives in the executive washrooms of the banks, savings & loans, insurance companies and brokerages. Anyone not caught up in the greed was suspect, potentially a socialist-commie-hippie treehugger, undermining the American way.

Except the American way has always been about opportunity and heart and innovation, not simply status symbols and one-upping the Joneses. Or more correctly, those attributes are the lasting values that form no bubbles nor end up in spectacular crashes.

Credit unions and coops and granges and unions have long been the real backbones that most of the country could advance under. The major financials, in the last quarter century, have operated like loan sharks.

And now we’re told that things won’t get better till confidence is restored in those loan sharks?

Bullshit. Why trust those who shirk culpability when they have no incentive to reform? New regulations will only mean hurdles they’ll try to jump over or run around.

The bank executives all should be fired. ALL OF THEM. A small bit of greed that prompts the desire to advance is understandable, but at the heights many executives keep trying to advance, that greed becomes unchecked growth, which in biology would be seen as a cancer. It’s time we understand that it remains a cancer whether it’s done by a Madoff, a Gates, a Jobs, Buffett, Winfrey or Soros. Unchecked greed is an addiction and we need to start treating those who have it as incredibly sick instead of enabling it.

That’s the unreported reality behind the current meltdown. And, poor as I am, I feel not an ounce of envy for those sickos who’ve devastated so many homes and families in this collapse then pretend they bear no responsibility. They are almost entirely at fault and they live in denial, counting the days when they can resume their relentless quest for tens of millions of dollars at the expense of the next round of rubes.