CORRECTED - Wall Street's allure may be gone for good

Corrects to delete reference in 26th paragraph to Jay Gatsby, who was not a Wall Streeter.

By Joseph A. Giannone - Analysis

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's fat cats are in the public's doghouse, and it could be a long time -- if ever -- before the eye-popping paycheques and glamour of the last two decades return.

Americans have long tolerated Wall Street's big bonuses, bigger egos and outsized influence because the firms and their executives at least made lots of money. Now, those days are over.

Huge losses, a multitrillion-dollar government bailout and those never-ending bonuses have turned the legendary "masters of the universe" into villains.

"The image of the all-powerful Wall Street banker as master of the universe will take 50 years to recover, if ever," said Bryan Burrough, co-author of "Barbarians at the Gate," a definitive account of the 1988 buyout of RJR Nabisco.

"No longer are these people seen as soldiers of American capitalism striding out into the battlefield with their mansions in Greenwich and $10 million (7 billion pound) bonuses."

Wall Street has always lured the nation's brightest with the prospects of fabulous wealth, more than making up for the long hours at the office and the intense pressures of the job. But now, a system that let bankers keep half their firm's revenue every year, regardless of the long-term results, is endangered.

No less a figure than the new president of the United States said it was "shameful" for bankers to collect $20 billion in bonuses in 2008, a year taxpayers were forced to provide trillions of dollars to prop up an industry that mismanaged its way to a mountain of credit losses.