I'm not in a charitable mood toward the fatcats who have screwed the pooch.

Why should I be charitable? I have been paying my own way and not getting the easy money that has been sloshing around.

But now that we are in the business of covering the bad bets, incompetence, and criminality of Wall Street financiers and mortgage makers, I do succumb to the temptation to watch these bastards pay a terrible, terrible cost for driving our economy into the shithole.

Now, I believe the federal government has to step in to engineer a soft landing for me and for you, but in so doing I think it also needs to confiscate the wealth of everybody involved in the trouble making.

Simple and graceful, isn't it? Take it all--the paper wealth in all forms, the houses, the cars, even the airline miles they racked up. They must pay for the costs they have brought to society which will resonate for some time, perhaps years. Impoverish them. Let them wander the streets in urine soaked pants and ask for a handout before having the NYC cops violate them with a plunger. It will focus the minds of the others, make them follow the rules a bit, inject a little conservatism into their greed. And it would be both amusing and just.

Before you get all worked up about creeping socialism, let me remind you that you currently live in a system where the government at all levels (federal, state, local) commonly seizes the property of individuals who may be involved in drug trafficking.

This is arbitrary and therefore tyrannical government, yes, but you haven't protested it much have you? I am willing to bet that your local police department has used confiscated drug money and property to fund their protection of you and yours.

And drug use is a victimless crime. Financial shenanigans endanger us all, our way of life, our savings (for those of us who have saved over the years). We must respond.

So, let's treat all of these financiers as the moral equivalents of the drug gangs beheading innocents in the pursuit of profits.