The bailout of the auto industry is still being discussed. By all accounts it will cost considerably less than the $350 billion plus already poured into Wall Street.

By all accounts it will involve pay cuts, job cuts and cuts to the benefits of retired autoworkers. It might also include public kissing of feet or some other form of humiliation.

Meanwhile the banks are considering what sort of bonuses they should give to their employees:

Banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch are completing their bonus pools and will begin announcing awards in the coming weeks. Bank executives have said that bonuses will be lower this year, and that the top executives will not receive bonuses at all.

But even scaling back pay drastically will still mean significant bonuses for rank-and-file traders and bankers. Banks say they need to pay these employees something above and beyond their salaries to keep them coming to work. But critics say bonuses should be reconsidered, given the billions of dollars of taxpayer money that has been injected into many of the banks.

Wonks Anonymous, along with many others, plans to keep coming back to work next year, regardless of what his bonus turns out to be. He believes that the vast majority of us will be happy to have a job after the disaster that the banks and their employees have created.

Wonks Anonymous will surely be forgiven when he wonders if we would be better off if some of these guys did not come back to work.