Performing God's work is tough, and should be rewarded accordingly. So it's no surprise that investment banking executives are still bitching and moaning about a looming Federal Deposit Insurance Corp "clawback provision" that would give the government the right to take back up to two years of executives' pay if their banks fail and they ruin the global economy again. It's obviously The Poors' fault for being poor and and stupid and for losing their money, not the guys who are in charge of it.

Bank of America feels just awful about it's role in packaging and selling a bunch of junk mortgages and inflating the economy with bad debt until the bottom fell out and more than 5 million people lost their jobs and more than 2.5 million went on food stamps, except for BofA's executives, who still got paid. So it's decided to pay $14 billion to BlackRock, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a bunch of other extremely wealthy institutions to make up for it. Are we square?

Be warned: You are going to be enraged when you hear this news, imbued with all the populist animalism you can muster and smashing crap all afternoon: Goldman Sachs is cutting some jobs in America and adding 1,000 people in Singapore. Are there even words to describe how much the average American will miss its favorite company?

The SEC has announced that J.P. Morgan Securities will pay $153 million to settle charges that the bank sold $1.1 billion in mortgage-backed securities that were designed to fail. That's about what the bank makes every three days.

You know who can't wait for Muammar Qaddafi to be gone? Ok, besides many Libyans. Bankers and other war profiteers: "The potential is huge," one banker told Time. Destruction breeds opportunity! These guys know exactly what they're doing.

Say you're in charge of a bloodthirsty dictator's stolen $1.3 billion sovereign-wealth fund. You make some risky investments with that money in the early days of the global financial meltdown, and end up losing 98% (!) of it. Then imagine you're Goldman Sachs dealing with Muammar Qaddafi's money!

JP Morgan chief and noted dick Jamie Dimon, speaking at the 2011 Celebration of Success in Denver, warned that it would be a "moral disaster" for the US to default on its debts. Considering the source, that's rich.

Hedge fund owner Raj Rajaratnam was convicted this morning on 14 counts of insider trading, on account of the hours and hours of secretly recorded phone conversations federal prosecutors had of him saying stuff like, "Hey, let's do some insider trading!"

Okay, banksters, let's call a temporary truce: We'll stop calling you sociopathic bloodsucking hell monsters for a few weeks, if you can just get Speaker John Boehner to stop using the impending debt ceiling vote as leverage to cut basically every entitlement program. We're all in this together against the dingbats who don't understand that failing to raise the debt ceiling means Global Apocalypse, not "tightening our belts" or whatever other homey metaphor that doesn't apply to macroeconomic reality.

Some former clients have filed a class action lawsuit against JPMorgan saying their bests interests weren't taken into account as the financial world first started to collapse in 2007 and, shockingly, that the bank actually profited $1.9 billion from the demise of London-based investment vehicle Sigma while the clients lost nearly $500 million in assets that JPMorgan didn't pull out. Oh the nerve of these not-as-rich-as-they-used-to-be people!

God's favorite investment banker, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, made a shitload of money last year! Originally we thought he made $13.2 million in 2010 but, according to Bloomberg News today, it turns out he nearly doubled his 2009 take with a $19 million compensation package:

The top 25 hedge fund managers pulled in a combined $22 billion last year. Also, hedge funds on the whole performed worse that the S&P 500 index. But it's cool, they're taxed at a lower rate than you and me!

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the princess of Wall Street, is venting again about the ignorant public and regulators whose "misconceptions" are blocking them from seeing the glory and perfection that comes with a fully unregulated financial services sector.

Good news, recession-weary Americans: bonuses for corporate CEOs "bounced back last year at a speedy clip." They rose more than 30% last year! Doesn't that fill you with joy? Doesn't that give you a sense of triumph and patriotism? Doesn't that make you want to run up to the next corporate CEO you see with a baseball bat in your hands and give him that bat, as a reward for his good work?

"Bureaucrats want to take away your debit card!" Seems unlikely. But that's the best slogan the banking industry could come up with to try to enrage consumers about a proposal to cut the fees that banks can charge to retailers when you use your debit card to buy something.

Rajat K. Gupta, a former member of Goldman Sachs' board and managing director of McKinsey & Co., has been sued by the SEC for tipping the Galleon Group's Raj Rajaratnam to Warren Buffet's 2008 investment into Goldman Sachs. The tip made Rajaratnam $900,000 in a matter of days. It's nice being rich.

As if Wall Street's hardworking bankers didn't have enough to worry about, now the FBI is warning them that they're the subject of terrorist threats. Extremely vague terrorist threats.

Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein got a nice raise over last year's salary of $600,000 to $2 million, for doing "God's work." With bonuses and stock holdings and other scams, Blankfein raked in $13.2 million last year. [DealBook]

The Way We Live Now: expanding and contracting. It's natural, like inhaling smoke from menthol and fiberglass. The economy grows; the economy shrinks. People on the margins get crushed. The only way to survive: go crying to your rich uncle.

JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon is at Davos with all the other rich people talking about money, and whining: "This constant refrain 'bankers, bankers, bankers' is just unproductive and unfair. People should just stop doing that." Bankers are your friends.