Call me an optimist, but I'm betting that you're too smart, too intelligent and too good-looking to hold a grudge against our nation's bankers. Anyone who reads my columns would never blame the denizens of the financial world simply because they're rewarding themselves this holiday season with oversized bonuses and monumental pay raises. It's what any hardworking individual would expect, even if the end result of that hard work happened to throw the country into a morass of debt and depression.

I mean, live and let live, right? Just because some crooked banker is getting a Ferrari instead of a jail sentence is no reason to deny our fine financiers the best of the holiday season.

And it is indeed a cheery holiday season on Wall Street, or so The New York Times reporter Susanne Craig recently reported in an article titled, "Wall Street Gets Its Groove Back."

"Wall Street pay seems to defy gravity: Bonuses will be up this year," Craig writes. "Overall compensation in financial services will rise 5 percent this year, with employees in some businesses like asset management getting increases of 15 percent."

I'm sure you share my relief in learning that our banking buddies have managed to avoid the kind of negative thinking that might infect ordinary people after blowing up the world economy. But maybe their guilt is being suppressed. Maybe there's a world of pain going on below the surface of that bespoke Hermes suit or under the stacked heels of that pair of Jimmy Choo's.

Why, it's even possible that the bankers are feeling so guilty, they are trying to relieve the pain by drowning themselves in Cristal. How else can you explain why a poor, tortured financial hotshot who patronizes New York's The Lion restaurant was so in need of liquid anesthesia that he ordered a bottle of 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild for $3,950?

I tell you, it's news like this that makes me want to cry into my Pabst Blue Ribbon — or it would, if I could afford to buy a six-pack.

You will definitely be relieved to learn that the pay of senior executives is also on the way up, and I do mean way up. Poor Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, certainly deserves a major bump. Blankfein took no bonus at all in 2008. One can only hope that through careful budgeting and scrimping, he managed to save a little of the $68.5 million he banked in 2007.

With news like this, in times like these, it's obvious that we can't beat a system that rewards incompetence, cronyism and greed. So, why not do the noble thing — and join it?

This was the goal of a devoted spouse who wrote to The Wall Street Journal careers reporter Elizabeth Garone. This reader wondered why her recent MBA-graduate hubby was unable to land a position in investment banking or private equity due to a lack of experience. Garone found an expert who suggested that the best course of action was for the new grad to do some power-networking among the alumni of his alma mater, the University of Chicago.

"By leveraging Chicago's alumni network now, your husband might discover opportunities at small firms where he would have a better chance of making inroads," suggested Constance Melrose, a managing director at eFinancialCareers North America.

This may make sense for the Chicago grad, but when your degree is from the Dave Dudley Famous Truck-Drivers School of Nashville, the opportunities to network with the big shots at top-tier financial institutions may be somewhat limited. (Unless, of course, you can catch them while you're moving their Picassos into their new penthouses on Park Avenue.) And besides, who wants to work for some small firm where you'd be lucky to take home 10 million or 15 million in your first year?

Better to chuck that MBA and get yourself a degree in bartending. Then get a position at The Lion, or some other watering hole of the rich and infamous. You'll be in the right place for networking, and when all the schmoozing is over and all the free drinks are drunk, your new best friends will welcome you warmly when you show up for work the next day at Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan.

I'm not saying you're going to make $68.5 million right away, but in a system this dumb and corrupt, you certainly should be able to drive off with a Ferrari or three before anyone notices.

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at [email protected]. To find out more about Bob Goldman, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.