For months he’s been increasingly downbeat about the nation’s economic outlook and about his job in asset management, the decisions for which have been largely taken out of his hands and reassigned to some muckety-muck in New York.

So when I heard he was up for a job review, I held my breath. With heads rolling all over the country, his job security didn’t sound all that great. I frankly expected the worst.

I shouldn’t have worried. He not only got an acceptable review, he got a bonus.

A bonus, compliments of you, Mr. and Mrs. America and that nice, fat government welfare program, TARP.

And I hear he wasn’t alone. No,  Wall Street financial institutions generously granted some $18 billion in bonuses last year, no doubt after waiting for those desperately needed bailout checks to clear.

Call it hubris, call it shameful, as President Barack Obama did, or just sit there with your jaw hanging open in dumbfounded silence.

What part of “moral fiber” do these people not understand?

Of course, morality is so 20th century. Make that early 20th century. For a long time now, the maxims of our era have been somewhat less altruistic than those our country once embraced.

You snooze, you lose, Bozo. Get while the getting’s good. Look out for Number One. Greed is good.

The bottom line for these Wall Street sharks is: They got theirs. You didn’t. Ha, ha, sucker.

Here’s the irony. A lot of those folks — and my brother is among them — could talk all day long about the failures of Big Government and the fiasco that is the Welfare State.

As my brother — God love him — has told me more times than I can count: “More government is not the answer.”

Except, it seems,  when it comes to those annual bonus checks, which no financier in his/her right mind can envision living without.