Wall Street bonuses

Wall Street's bad bonus year did not extend to Citigroup's c-suite. CEO Vikram Pandit, who said he'd take a salary of $1 until Citi returned to profitability, pulled in nearly $14.9 million this year, and his fellow top officers took home big raises too.

With unemployment still high, late mortgage payments rising, and the number of Americans in poverty at record levels, it seems that Main Street is headed for a hard, cold holiday season. But, somewhat surprisingly, so too are the fat cats of Wall Street -- relatively speaking.

President Obama has officially launched his reelection campaign and when it's time to vote again many may ask themselves whether they are better off than they were four years ago. A close look at the statistics reveals the clear winners and losers so far.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday approved a measure that gives institutional shareholders a vote on executive pay at large corporations, part of regulators' efforts to give investors greater say over top-level salaries that have been described as excessive.

To wrap your head around how much someone like Larry Ellison makes, try comparing his compensation to the median income of an American household -- $49,777. His 2008 take of $543 million is the equivalent of the annual earnings of 10,908 average American families. Got that?

Bankers worldwide are expecting smaller bonuses this year. Still, they will be hard pressed to find much sympathy as their base salaries were boosted -- in some cases doubled -- this year to compensate for the lower year-end bonuses.

Goldman Sachs Group's (GS) top executives will receive about $111.3 million worth of stock next month in delayed compensation for their work in 2009 and 2007. CEO Lloyd Blankfein will receive about $24.3 million in January, Bloomberg News reported. Gary D. Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs, will...

Though most Americans wish that Congress would rein in excessive pay on Wall Street, that won't happen while the huge campaign contributions keep flowing. And the financial industry's big money shell game drains away something more precious from our society than money -- it siphons off talent.

Morgan Stanley is reportedly planning to pay out 10% to 25% less in bonuses this year to its employees, an effort to cut costs as it deals with volatile market conditions. The cuts are slated to affect traders, back-office staff and other employee groups, but perhaps not unusually strong performers.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett extracted onerous terms from Goldman Sachs when he saved it from a potential meltdown. Two years later, Wall Street is healthy again, Goldman wants Buffett out of its hair, and he's looking at a $3.5 billion profit on that $5 billion lifeline.