Newly homeless ex-employees of Bear Stearns and JP Morgan struggle to survive.

Wall Street was stunned this week by yet another round of layouts - this time Citibank’s announcement that they would layoff 9,000 employees.

The employees, most of them investment bankers making salaries in the range of $200,000, are protesting these layoffs as being unjust and likely to drive them into financial crisis if not homelessness.

“I spent the past few years building complex mortgage based derivative securities for Citibank,” said one disgruntled soon to be ex-employee, “and what do I get for it? The boot!”

Indeed, most Americans surveyed are sympathetic to their plight. “My home just went into foreclosure because my payments rose from $500/month to $4,500/month,” said Marvin P. Labor of Oakridge TN. “I was holding one of their easy-qualifying low doc ‘your home is our home’ mortgage products. The officer assured me it was the best thing for me, but I guess I really should have read the fine print - now my home is there home. Still, I suppose I’m better off than those guys who went from $200 thousand to nothing. I really don’t hate them for creating the mortgage that drove me into bankruptcy. I really don’t.”

The Fed released a statement this week stating that the sudden job loss among the people most responsible for creating the nation’s sub-prime mortgage crisis and triggering a recession is not “cosmic justice”, but rather an abnormal quirk in the economy. “Usually those people who cause an economic crisis end up wealthy and suffer no consequences from their actions,” said Fed Chairman Bernanke. “This really is an unusual situation.

Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan, in adopting a new policy of public service after purchasing Bear Stearns at fire sale prices, rescinded Stearns’ offers to 250 new graduates. “The best way to stabilize the economy is to keep those crazy new graduates away,” said Jamie Dimon, Morgan’s CEO, “we need to keep the economy in the hands of those mature bankers who have given our financial system the stability it has today.”