Getting fired while having surgery and the effect on your local bank

Ahh, don’t you love the warmth of Wall Street?

On the other hand, who knows what types of financial products Ms. Kennedy may have been hawking, managing, selling, etc.?

Her getting canned may be a bit of schadenfreudic justice. And here’s one reason to feel less sorry for her:

Banks and brokerage firms generally pay out about 50 percent of their revenue to employees as salaries and bonuses. Last year that percentage leapt to 70 percent, even as business began to dry up.

And, it’s not just schlubs who are being axed:

“People will try to delay them for as long as possible,” Meredith Whitney, the banking analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said of the layoffs, which she thinks are far from over. “It cuts to the bone.”

Meanwhile, you may have longer waiting times at your friendly local bank:

Whitney estimates that on average banks announced plans to reduce their work forces by 5 to 8 percent. They probably will have to cut at least twice that amount, she said.

Wunderbar. More online/telephone banking will probably get outsourced to India, too.