ROBERT J. SAMUELSON GOES COMMIE!!!

In this WaPo op-ed, he argues that Wall Street bonuses are not dependent on the overall GDP of the United States:

By contrast, Wall Street compensation levels are tied to the nation's overall wealth. Investment banks, hedge funds, private equity firms and many other financial institutions trade stocks, bonds and other securities for their own profit. They also advise mutual funds, pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals on how to invest and trade.

There's a big difference between annual production and national wealth.

This means that Wall Street caters to the small fraction of Americans who have the assets, NOT the vaunted "producers" of wingnut propaganda. This report gives us an idea of who Wall Street really serves:

Table 2: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2007

	Investment Assets
	Top 1 percent	Next 9 percent	Bottom 90 percent
Business equity	62.4%	30.9%	6.7%
Financial securities	60.6%	37.9%	1.5%
Trusts	38.9%	40.5%	20.6%
Stocks and mutual funds	38.3%	42.9%	18.8%
Non-home real estate	28.3%	48.6%	23.1%
TOTAL investment assets	49.7%	38.1%	12.2%