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If you're like most people, you're a bit ticked off that the banks that were begging Washington for billions last year are the same ones that are now paying out giant bonuses. (JPMorgan reported today that it set aside a record $26.9 billion to compensate its employees in 2009.) But maybe it's time to stop whining and find something else to complain about?

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post sure thinks so:

The blame game for the financial crisis has been going on for two years now, and it is getting tiresome. The money's long since been lost, the first crop of books has already been published, and regulators are well along in hammering out new rules to make sure it doesn't happen again. For the rest of us, the best approach to Wall Street might be to simply ignore it and turn our attention to those parts of the economy that can create real economic value and broadly shared prosperity.

What's done is done, people. The financial crisis is old news at this point. Getting angry isn't going to change anything. (And all your complaining is beginning to get annoying!) Besides, you never had much of an argument in the first place:

One reason for the populist backlash is that people assume the bonuses are going to the same Wall Street wise guys who caused the financial crisis. Not true. Many of those who made the worst decisions have been fired, while many of those who will earn bonuses work in divisions that had nothing to do with the financial debacle. But it's also important to remember that culpability for the crisis extends well beyond Wall Street bankers to asleep-at-the-switch regulators, conflicted rating agencies, sleazy brokers, greedy mortgage bankers, reckless money managers and millions of clueless homeowners, along with an entire country that insisted on living beyond its means.

Did you hear that? All the really bad people have been fired! So you don't have to worry about them screwing things up in the future. Besides, you probably shouldn't have been blaming them in the first place. No one's hands are clean here!

If Pearlstein's explanation doesn't do much to reassure you, try telling yourself that some of the money that big banks are making is going right back out the door to help some of the neediest people on the planet. In the last 48 hours, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley all promised to give $1 million a piece to victims of the earthquake in Haiti. Sure, a bank giving $1 million to charity is the same as you giving a homeless man a quarter. And, yes, Citigroup managed to find it in its heart to give out $2 million. But it could have been worse. (Here's looking at you, American Express.)

Blaming Wall Street on bonuses is hypocritical [WP]
Which Financial Institution Cares the Most About Haiti? [NYM]