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The financial titans running Wall Street appear still to be in denial, but the devastation they wrought upon citizens both in the U.S and the rest of the world will prove to be their undoing — a self-destruct mechanism triggered when greed became so obscenely excessive that it no longer is even a matter for reasonable debate.

“First, these financial geniuses made a series of bad decisions that cost us at least 30 percent of the value of everything we own. Then we gave them $700 billion of our children’s money so they could stay afloat. And now they’re rewarding themselves for their incompetence with our tax dollars.”

– Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

Jonathan Alter has an excellent column — “The Stimulus that Didn’t Stir” — in the current Feb. 9 issue of Newsweek. He places the fiasco into its proper perspective by telling it like it is. No sugar-coating there, just the bare, horrendous facts that only the terminally clueless could deny.

Public outrage over these Wall Street thugs’ clueless actions in the wake of September’s meltdown has only begun. Let’s hope that the new rules announced this week by President Obama — such as the overdue executive compensation cap for banks that accept federal rescue dollars — also is only the beginning of reigning in that runaway greed…and crippling it for good.

The era of non-accountability is over. Unlike the parallel universe in which Wall Street has operated for several decades, there once again is a place — a newly restored world of reality — where right does prevail over wrong.

It’s that place then-presidential-candidate Bill Clinton was so fond of telling us about in 1992. The place called hope. It may not keep food on the table, or the house out of foreclosure, or the job from disappearing. But it’s a damn good place to begin the long, arduous journey ahead of us.