Executive Pay

Executive compensation at financial firms and other corporations began to soar in the 1990s. When the bottom dropped out of the economy in recent years, large pay packages became the focus of public fury—particularly when they were going to executives of companies receiving taxpayer funds.
President Obama has said that executive pay packages encouraging excessive risk led to the practices responsible for the financial crisis, and his administration has looked for ways to curb executive pay. But in fact, bonuses have continued to rise at a significant rate. Overall compensation in financial services rose 5 percent in 2010, according to one survey, with employees in some businesses like asset management getting increases of 15 percent.
In June 2010, the Federal Reserve, six months into a compensation review of the country’s 28 largest financial companies, found that many of the bonus and incentive programs that economists say contributed to the financial crisis remained in place. And in a report released in July 2010, Kenneth R. Feinberg, President Obama’s special master for executive compensation, said that nearly 80 percent of the $2 billion 2008 bonus pay was unmerited.
An analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that pay and benefits at the top 25 publicly traded banks and security firms on Wall Street hit a record of $135.5 billion.
But in March 2011, the New York State comptroller's office reported that cash bonuses on Wall Street dropped in 2010 while overall compensation rose 6 percent. The comptroller’s report found that Wall Street doled out an estimated $20.8 billion in cash in 2010, an 8 percent decline from 2009 and a fraction of what was paid out before the financial crisis. As cash payouts dipped slightly the previous year, so did profits on Wall Street.