Thomas Frank, in yesterday's edition of the Wall Street Journal:

The announcement last week that Trader Monthly magazine was ceasing publication was one of those moments when a chance arrow of history scores a perfect bull's eye on a deserving target. The current recession, brought on at least in part by Wall Street's bonus lust, has claimed countless innocent victims. But in this case it has finally delivered a comeuppance to our era's loudest, gaudiest, cockiest champion of Wall Street excess....

[I]f you were one of the lucky ones, Trader Monthly -- "See It, Make It, Spend It," was its slogan -- stood ready to help you figure out how to blow your share properly, conspicuously, flamboyantly.Oh, there were cars: Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Ferraris, Maseratis, sometimes described in the magazine's characteristic tone of flippant indulgence. There were airplanes, reviewed and rated in a column specifically dedicated to that purpose....[O]ne does not get the sense that [the magazine's] trader readers aspired to live this way because they were jolly bon vivants. Quite the opposite. At one point in its intermittent pursuit of the best possible record player, for example, Trader Monthly described what it claimed to be a $300,000 turntable as "a huge middle finger to everyone who enters your home."

Read the whole thing here.