Wall Street strikes back: Traders to the barricades!

Over the past few months, the financial news has often read like an episode of Dallas, with a huge cast of characters fighting for the role of J.R. Engraged by stories about the Fulds and Thains, Mozilos and Corbets, the general public has struck back against the super-rich with rage and invective. Reading the comments section of any financial blog has become a lesson in revolutionary anger, with seemingly ordinary folks calling for mass jailings, firing squads, and the kind of enhanced interrogation techniques that would give Quentin Tarentino the heebie-jeebies.

The general perception that Wall Street money men aren't quite human is far from new. For the public, the image of Gordon Gekko-style sleazeballs has long colored popular perception; for the financial community, the ideal has often been the type-A, work-hard/play-hard superhuman popularized by magazines like Trader Monthly, Dealmaker, or pretty much any other title published by Doubledown Media. In either case, financial professionals aren't quite normal average humans.