Austerity Coming to Wall St.

“The days of pre-crisis excess on Wall Street are definitely over at Morgan Stanley.

Cost-cutting measures are going down to the line at the investment bank — even basics like phone usage are being watched in a way never seen before.

The bank aims to cut $500 million in costs this year alone, and want to ramp up the savings to $1 billion over the next three years.

We already reported yesterday that there are more job cuts coming to Morgan Stanley’s Smith Barney unit.

But cost-cutting isn’t stopping there.

According to the WSJ, “routine expenses” — like travel to mobile phone usage — are going to be tracked much more closely….”

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