The Wall Street Journal laments the decrepit state of our investment banks:

Investment banking has since become a phantom realm, where everyone is busy but no one is doing anything. In this world, status is conferred by a quality meeting, not a completed transaction; a $700,000 salary is deemed generous; and an apocryphal story keeps circulating of a former J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. mortgage-securities banker now driving a forklift.

Scraping by on $700,000 a year. Poor fellows. Is that before or after the bonus?

(via link dump from a more reality-based source of financial commentary, the excellent Naked Capitalism...)