THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Fail. That's it, pure and simple, with one caveat, make it a really, really big failure. That' what these two clowns did.

UNDER the stewardship of Dow Kim and Thomas G. Maheras, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup built positions in subprime-related securities that led to $34 billion in write-downs last year. The debacle cost chief executives their jobs and brought two of the world’s premier financial institutions to their knees.

In any other industry, Mr. Kim and Mr. Maheras would be pariahs. But in the looking-glass world of Wall Street, they — and others like them — are hot properties. The two executives are well on their way to reviving their careers, even as global markets shudder at the prospect that Merrill and Citigroup may report further subprime losses in the coming months.

Mr. Maheras, who left his job as co-president of Citigroup’s investment bank this fall after being demoted, has had serious discussions with several investment banks, including Bear Stearns, about taking on a top management position, people who have been briefed on the situation said. And he has also been approached by investment firms willing to back him to the tune of $1 billion or more if he decides to start his own hedge fund, these people said.

Mr. Kim, who until this spring was a co-president at Merrill Lynch with oversight of the firm’s trading and market operations, has been crisscrossing the globe in recent months raising money for his new hedge fund, Diamond Lake Capital.

And they are not alone, another one of their ilk.

Zoe Cruz, the Morgan Stanley co-president who was forced to leave her job after $10.8 billion in subprime losses, has been approached by investment banks, hedge funds and private equity funds about a senior management role, people briefed on those discussions say.

“It is always an assumption on Wall Street that it is not the individuals that lose money; it’s the system,”

But they love to overlook the fact that it was a system crafted and played by these atrociously expensive bozos. But the ones who actually pay don't live in their neighborhood.

But last week, as markets worldwide gyrated, lower-level bankers braced themselves for bad news. Bank of America, whose profit fell 95 percent last year from mortgage-related exposure, has said it would pare down its trading and investment banking operations and cut more than 1,000 positions. Citigroup has also laid off investment bankers in recent weeks and has said it would cut 4,200 jobs, with more expected to follow. Morgan Stanley said Thursday that it would cut 1,000 operational jobs, and Merrill Lynch was expected to reduce its staff.

With a recession looming, the deal-making and underwriting environment is looking stagnant. Banks are cutting costs and taking a hard look at their head counts. All these developments do not bode well for bankers’ chances of landing another job anytime soon.

The Wall St equivalent of Soylent Green.

So Maheras, Kim and Cruz all land their asses in a tub of butter thanks to a perverted sense of value. And the rest of us should remember this when some slick talking stranger says we should put Social Security and our retirement money into Wall St. In truth, we should probably kill the SOB.