The culprit? The end of the boom in leveraged lending and the dwindling pace of mergers and acquisitions.

Wall Street has already axed more than 34,000 jobs since the credit crisis kicked off last July, the most jobs lost on the Street since the dot-com bubble popped in 2001.

While droves of Wall Street suits face the chop, those who remain in their plum jobs face being harassed by the hoi polloi, says James Howard Kunstler.James sees the “very first sign of a much broader citizen revolt against the extraordinary protections being shown to crapped-out investment banker boyz — at the expense of millions of equally crapped-out poor shlubs facing the default and re-po of their McDwelling places.”

“Last Wednesday, a bunch of peeved mortgagees protesting government favoritism in the Bear Stearns case entered the lobby of the company’s (soon-to-be-former) headquarters building in midtown Manhattan.

“Wait until summer gets underway and The New York Post gossip page resumes its coverage of hijinks in the Hamptons. The executives of Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan / Chase, and other dealers in fraudulent securities, plus the art world and show biz glitteratti who party together out there, might all find themselves the object of considerable grievance and resentment as the beaching season ramps up, and the limos roll around the charity lobster roasts, and the guests stray down the lawns, chardonnays in hand, to plot divorce from their over-leveraged husbands…. God knows what seekers-of-vengeance will be creepy-crawling the privet plantings along Gin Lane in the crepuscular gloom, searching for trophy wives to garrote.