Oh ho, it appears this global economic meltdown is having a deleterious effect on massive Wall Street bonuses! They were down 44-freaking-percent last year. Of course this will mostly hurt you, the poors.

Bonuses for NYC finance workers were a mere $18.7 billion, down to pre-dotcom crash levels.

The decline is the largest on record in absolute dollars and the largest percentage decline in more than 30 years, but the size of the bonus pool is still the sixth largest on record.

This adds up to nearly $15 billion that will not be spent on Manhattan condos, jewelry, vacations, shopping sprees, new cars, suits, personal training, chauffeurs, or other services that cause said bonus money to trickle down to normal people such as you, and me, Reagan-style. The finance guys themselves (who haven't been laid off yet) will probably be okay. The only real upside is that it looks like mandatory bottle service won't be back any time soon.