Hat's off to the Brits. Britain is the first country to adopt rules for bank bonuses.

What are these rules? Following a five month consultative period the Financial Services Authority published its final code which is effective January 2010. The codes are very simple and straightforward. They say that bank bonuses can be guaranteed for only one year and not be several times a banker's salary.

The regulator backed away from a proposal that would have required banks to defer bonuses over several years.

Well, now it seems that even the big boys have to play by the rules. What do I mean play by the rules? Apparently, if a bank wants to pay back the TARP monies, they must demonstrate that they can raise equity.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) and American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) were the only two banks that did not raise equity.

So there was an exchange between regulators and Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's chief executive, who said that he did not believe that ability to tap capital markets should have been relevant for his bank. He went on to say, "Any argument you can think of, you could assume we made with our regulators. And as you could also expect, they won.The primary reason was access to equity capital markets, and its hard for me to imagine that really applies in the JPMorgan case." So it seems that the exchange was spirited to say the least.