THE SOUND OF ATLAS SHRUGGING. Sometimes it's the absence of compensating differentials at the taxpayer-assisted banking houses.

In a business where your bonus is often five times your base pay, that’s devastating news. And we’re talking about a line of work in which virtually all satisfaction is paycheck-dependent.

“Fact is that this is a terrible way to make a living — except for the money,” Ken Miller, a former vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston and now a private investor, said. “The lifestyle is terrible — the hours, the sucking up. These guys must feel like they’re the victims of a capricious god.”

That’s especially galling to the many in investment banks who had nothing to do with the mortgage end of their company’s business. Maria Anguiano, who works in Barclays’ municipal finance department, has yet to hear if she is getting a bonus this year, but she thinks she deserves one, given the millions her department earned.

“If you just take your base home, the question becomes, why not just work at a nonprofit from 8 to 4 instead of a bank where you’re expected to work weekends and every night till 10 or 11?” she said.

I've remarked on opting out for some time. It's unusual for it to manifest itself in a recession, although there are probably lots of smart people in banking who are better hiring prospects than the disappointed products of access-assessment-remediation-retention.

Perhaps the increased income inequality of the past 20 years is an expanding compensating differential -- any takers on a dissertation?