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The NY Times ran a colorful article last week on the difficulty that the rich and famous Wall Street Tycoons will have living on the "measly" $500K salary cap Obama has installed:

Private school: $32,000 a year per student.

Mortgage: $96,000 a year.

Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.

Nanny: $45,000 a year.

We are already at $269,000, and we haven't even gotten to taxes yet.

Yup...it's nearly impossible to live in New York City as an Upper Eastside Wall Street exec on half-a-million in salary a year:

"As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable," said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, "The Manny," and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. "Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale."

Read on and have pity on the poor bastards from Wall Street who have helped wreck this economy...NOT!

But will we really be able to limit their pay?

Gretchen Morgenson thinks it'll be nearly impossible to make it stick:

Loud rebukes against executive excess are amusing, but a $500,000 cap on salary means only that the executives will be paid some other way. And requiring companies to recover compensation only if an executive is found to have lied on financial statements? Good luck with that.

"The bite doesn't match the bark," said Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant in White Plains. "Or, put another way, this looks like nip and tuck in a triage situation."

Trying to change the entitlement mind-set that drives executive pay practices is a worthy goal, of course. After all, taxpayers are being asked to redistribute their future wealth by putting billions into banks, all in the hopes of getting the economy to stir.

But if even some of that money goes to cushy pay and obnoxious perks, then we are pouring water into a very leaky -- and undeserving -- bucket.

What we really need are more protests following the one that saw over 300 angry citizens storm the house of Morgan Stanley CEO, John Mack:

About 300 homeowners with bullhorns marched past a police cruiser, up the driveway and to the front door of the house where Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack lives.

"John! Where are you, John?" one protester called up to the castle-like stone walls of the house. Bruce Marks is the housing advocate behind what he calls a "predators tour."

"This guy, he has a net worth of over $400 million," Marks says. "Look at his house. He gets lost in his own house. It's so outrageous."

Ahhhh...Let the revolution begin!

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