Clearly, Wall Street ripoffs are only getting more outrageous, and Madoff’s crimes have had the farthest reach of all.

The Comfort Diner

The reason wasn’t some unresolved resentment toward the colonies, nor do I think it can be attributed entirely to a lack of familiarity with local custom (Yes, tips are much more modest in your country, I wanted to scream, but you’ve got a guidebook – read it!).

It came down to this: Brits knew that they were expected to tip more, but they often didn’t realize why. In Britain, you see, waitstaff are paid a living wage, so tips are just an added perk for great service. In the States, of course, tips are anticipated and factored into wages, allowing restaurants to pay their staff less than minimum wage (to my recollection, it was around $2.50 an hour). So Brits visiting my diner thought a 15 to 20 percent tip was an example of profligate and unnecessary American spending; when in fact their refusal to add gratuity was a direct knock to my salary.

A wholesale elimination of bonuses is kind of like stripping servers of their tips – by doing it, you’re messing with the structure by which they get paid, and as Greg argues, that’s not really fair. Just like tips in the service industry, for many, Wall Street Bonuses are something of a hedge against cyclical instability in the industry and a lack of job security. Taking them away on principle fails to account for how entwined with the salary structure they are.

That said, I think that points to a problem with the structure. Wall Streeters, be they C.E.Os or entry level, choose to take risks (the risk that their job will fall victim to market fluctuations) in the hopes of great reward (the $.5 million – or more – bonus). It turns out, as we all know too well, that they were also gambling with risky financial instruments, to their (and our) great misfortune. Maybe the pay structure on Wall Street shouldn’t be so inherently risky, nor the bonuses so immoderate. And of course, we can’t forget about those at the top who got us into this mess, and to whom bonus should really not be given. Just like when a waitress spills a bottle of wine in your lap or a waiter unapologetically forgets your order — in some cases, a tip should simply be withheld.

Mundane trading days like Monday are now exotic and rare

Today was an incredible day for the markets. At the closing bell, the Dow had fallen a remarkable…five points. That’s about one-sixteenth of a percentage point, in case you were counting. The negligible stock movement may seem yawn-worthy at first blush, but in the new upside-down world, where markets soar and plunge in the thousand-point range, and swings of three, four and five hundred have become the norm, a mildly-swaying, low-volume trading day like today is way out of the ordinary.

In the halcyon days of two months ago (when we were just in a recession, not an apocalypse), a financial reporter would have cursed a day like today, because it would mean they’d have to really scrape and claw to find something to write about. Manufacturing is at its lowest level in a quarter-century, but the market hasn’t reacted. And traders don’t expect to be surprised by the country’s choice for leader of the free world. But parsing the minuscule stock movements of individual companies and industries and trying to extrapolate a unifying economic theory would, in the summer, have been tedious and unmemorable.

But we’re in Bizarro World now, and a market that doesn’t break out of a 140-point range for the whole day (versus the October daily average movement of 594 points), is big news. Calm is the new volatile. Same is the new different. Normal is the new “what the…?”

Bloomberg, AP and the New York Times have issued fairly restrained market wrap-ups. But I’m going to go ahead and declare this day momentous, precisely because of its ordinariness.

With America’s economy pummeled and its financial system all but socialized, a once-unthinkable reality has dawned on the populace: we may not be the world’s only superpower for much longer.

True. But neither will anybody else.

Over the past year, the U.S. economy softened as that of two erstwhile underdogs emerged: India and China. Good money was on Russia and Brazil seeing increased economic strength, too. And as pundits marveled at the breakneck speed of these emerging economies’ growth, the thinly veiled subtext to their awe was, “how much trouble are we in?”

China and India presented a real threat to America’s status as top economic dogs, and it stood to reason that our power might recede as theirs rose. Then came the fall of 2008.

The spectacular events of the past month smashed Wall Street records and were enough to convince anybody that far from being invincible, we had been living in a house of cards. Actually, it was more like a house of gum wrappers.

But as we faced the very real possibility that America might have to give up its role as world economic leader (and by extension world police, nation-builder and sometimes bully), something else became just as clear. We were going to drag down everyone with us. I’m looking at you, BRIC countries.

Now, not only is Europe’s economy faltering partially as a consequence of its investment in U.S. mortgage-backed securities, but India and China’s economies have proven inextricably linked to ours, and therefore very vulnerable. China holds up to 70% of its foreign reserves in dollar assets including Treasuries and Fannie and Freddie. It would have seen its economy crater had those two entities been allowed to fail. India’s growth is slowing, due not only to the global financial crisis but its own slump in consumer spending and high inflation.

Could we be heading towards a world with no superpowers? And what does that look like? A utopian future world where countries are equally represented, or a globally depressed economy without a benevolent parent to spread the wealth around? The answer is not at all clear.

Apparently, being a superpower means that when you give up the title, you also get to torch the arena. Super.