It will affect 175 execs at seven firms. Whoop-de-do. Execs and their representatives were in on negotiations, and the result may assuage public outrage. But Feinberg's action will be no more effective in the long run as a cure for excessive greed than a kiss on your bruised knee from Mommy. Sure, it feels good that someone cares, but it doesn't really help.

Best take so far is from the WSJ:

It took a day or so for analysts and investors to catch up to the bullshit emanating from Goldman Sachs's reports of a healthy first quarter and its proud announcement that it was selling stock to raise money and was ready to pay back the government.

But other sharks on Wall Street caught a whiff of blood in the water, and Goldman's share-price bounced back down.

Questions remain, however, about why exactly Goldman raked in bailout money last fall ("Mutiny of the bountiful").

As for the analysts and other observers: The Wall Street Journal laid it out well this morning, ahead of the opening bell:

Itching to extricate itself from government control of its ability to resume paying exorbitant big bonuses and salaries to its crew, the Goldman buccaneers now have to back off a little.

"Aaargh," they muttered.

When's the last time you heard a business group — a Chamber of Commerce, no less — openly defending pirates? Or of the U.S. and Iran working together against a common enemy?

In Somalia — untouched by the global financial crisis because it's always in crisis, even in good times — pirates aren't hoods. They're Robin Hoods. And the U.S. African Chamber of Commerce does have a point when it asks today in a virtually ignored statement, "Who are the Real Pirates of East Africa and Somalia?" (The D.C.-based business group has a special interest: Its founder and president, Martin Mohammed, is from Somalia.)

Click on the CBC video above ("Somali Pirates See Themselves As Unofficial Coast Guard") for an alternate view of the piracy off the coast of Somalia — the dumping by foreign vessels of toxic waste that the tsunami washed ashore and that has made an untold number of Somalis deathly ill, the invasion of foreign fishing vessels destroying coastal Somalia's fishing industry. The Canadian news video notes the unusual occurrence of the U.S. and Iran "uniting against a common enemy."