A survey conducted by Johnson Associates, a compensation consultant firm, indicates that compensation for employees of hedge funds, retail banking and private equity firms will be higher by 5%, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Here are some findings of the Johnson sturdy:

• Bond traders will see bonuses for 2010 decline 25% to 30%.
• Stock traders will see bonuses fall by 20% to 25%.
• Employees of asset management firms, including hedge funds, can see a 5% gain, reflecting the increase in assets under management.
• Retail banks are set to increase bonuses 5% to 10%.
• Despite this year's increases, bonuses will be 20% to 30% lower than the all time high in 2007.

Maybe Goldman Sachs (GS) does care what outsiders think about it. The company has come under plenty of fire this year for its post-financial crisis bonus payments, especially after having accepted TARP money from the government. In order to keep the world off its back, the bank is going to pay managers their annual bonuses in stock this year instead of cash.

And the stock issued will have to be held for five years. So, recipients will have a long-term stake in the company. But it seems they're being compensated for that, too as GS is spending a total of over $20 billion in compensation.

French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, said he would follow the U.K. and impose a one-off tax on bonus payouts by banks operating in France.

The tax would be levied on bonus payouts above 27,000 euros. Paris's move is in line with Britain's tax on payouts above 25,000 pounds.

Both leaders issued a statement saying: "It is clear that the action must be taken at a global level. No territory can be expected to or be able to act on their own."

U.S. Treasury Secretary, Geithner, was severely critical of excessive bank bonuses. In a recent interview he said, "We want to see fundamental constraints on how senior executives are paid at these institutions."

Geithner has been under fire for his actions during the bank bailouts of last year. He defended himself by saying: "The entire U.S. financial system and all the major firms in the country, and even small banks across the country, were at that moment at the middle of a classic run, a classic bank run."

We've got to congratulate Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, for his tough stand on bank bonuses. He plans to make some bank bonuses illegal, according to a Bloomberg article.

Regulators will be given "powers if necessary to tear up contracts that would result in payments being made that would cause instability," according to the Sunday Telegraph. Not only that, but the paper reports that City Minister Paul Myners told Sky News that "if those contracts are written, they will be voided under law."

We have another fly in the ointment. Judge Jed Ratkoff of federal district court refused to approve a $33 million settlement in the SEC vs. Bank of America Corp case.

In the complaint, the SEC had alleged that Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC) told investors in the proxy documents for the Merrill Lynch merger that Merrill agreed NOT to award year-end performance bonuses before the merger closed.

A report today in The New York Post reveals that bailed-out Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is still doling out millions in bonuses to attract and retain top banking talent. Bank of America is catching heat over the bonus payouts, since it hasn't yet received federal clearance to repay its $45 billion in TARP loans.

Bank of America allegedly shelled out $15 million over two years to keep Fares Noujaim, an alumnus of both Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, who now serves as the company's vice chairman of investment banking. Harry McMahon is named as another banker who's been enticed to stay with handsome bonuses.

Bank lobbyists have a job I would not want. Their clients need them to fight a tide of populist revulsion against the use of taxpayer money to pay out billions in bonuses to bankers who pushed the global financial system into bankruptcy. More specifically, those bank lobbyists are buttonholing senators, trying to convince them to vote against a House bill that passed by a vote of 328 to 93, which would tax bonuses paid to bailout recipients at 90%. These lobbyists are making arguments that lack substance.

First, they suggest that restricting bonuses will put the companies at a competitive disadvantage. That argument is content-free because the bonus tax would apply to 500 firms that have received $200 billion from the government. This means that all those financial institutions will face the same bonus restrictions and thus all be on the same playing field. Moreover, these so-called talented individuals the lobbyists are seeking to reward with bonuses are the very same ones who made the money-losing deals in the first place. I am not sure how much more of that kind of "talent" we can afford.

Ken Lewis followed the lead of many other bank CEOs. The head of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) will take no bonus for last year. BAC will also miss its financial forecasts for 2008.

There is still a very substantial question about how bank boards handled the credit crisis and the M&A deals some large firms did in the wake of the trouble. Bank of America bought Countrywide just as other large banks picked up rivals at bargain prices.

But, were they bargains? There is a good deal of analysis emerging that JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) may struggle to integrate Bear Stearns and other acquisitions. The balance sheets of the bank's targets may be worse than first realized.

Even if Countrywide was a relatively good deal, integrating it takes management time away from running the BAC core businesses which are likely to suffer heavy losses due to credit write-offs from consumer and business loans.

Lewis was the architect of the BAC M&A deals. He seems to be paying a relatively low price for the extent to which they have damaged the bank. The firm's board does not appear to care much about that.

The buck of bad decisions is being passed around at BAC and shareholders will probably end up with it.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Flying shoe-dodger, President George W. Bush, has a track record of rewarding the guilty. After the faked intelligence that gave him the ammunition he needed to invade Iraq in 2004, Bush awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom to CIA Director George "Slam Dunk" Tenet. And to reward the banks that got us into the current financial catastrophe, Bush rammed through Congress a bill that uses $700 billion of our tax dollars to pay bonuses to the executives who run those banks.

How did he do that? As usual, he did it secretively. The law that created the bailout bill includes provisions that limit executive compensation for banks that get bailout money. Specifically, the bill requires that banks report to the IRS any compensation above $500,000 paid to their top five executives. If that reporting does not occur, the IRS can impose tax penalties. Not only that, but there is no limit to what people below the top five can get paid -- so there never was any way to keep taxpayer money from paying millions to the traders and investment bankers who often get more than the CEO.

Vikram Pandit, Citigroup (NYSE: C)'s CEO, is set to announce an even bigger round of job cuts this morning. (This round may supercede the potential 10,000 layoffs announced last Friday.) Will these cuts help revive Citi? No. But they may lower its cash burn rate by $50 billion in 2009. And investors are not impressed, sending its stock down 2.2% in pre-market.

Citi's 53,000 job cuts would represent a 14% cut -- yielding a total workforce of 300,000. Citi may also decide on canceling management bonuses -- a move led by Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS). Let's hope that these bonus cuts affect the entire industry -- not just top management. After all, the Treasury has already given $159 billion to 24 leading banks and it would be a shame to see that money going to pay bonuses to people who got us into this mess.

Meanwhile, Citi is posed to raise rates on its credit card customers. Citi, which had 182.7 million open card accounts card customers in the third quarter, has told as many as 20% of them that their rates are being raised by an average of three percentage points. Credit losses in Citi's global card division rose over a third to $1.59 billion in the third quarter of 2008.

Now, thousands of Citi workers will pay with their jobs.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He owns Citigroup stock.

NY State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo wants to see detailed account of the bonuses banks and investment houses are planning to pay for 2008, and he wants the figures before the checks are passed out. According to The Wall Street Journal, "He is looking for information from banks that have received or are expected to receive funds under the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program."

It is not clear why Cuomo has anything to say about a federal matter, but that has not stopped him from investigating Wall Street matters before. Among the firms being asked to supply data are Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).

Cuomo's case may turn on whether banks committed fraud by planning to make large bonus payments, but it is not quite clear why rewarding people for their work could be considered criminal. There may be an ethical problem with paying huge sums for work that, in some cases, lost Wall Street firms money. There may also be a shareholder issue about whether people holding stock in these companies think boards should pass out such a large portion of revenue to senior employees.

It has taken forever to curb huge payouts on Wall Street. There are now enough people looking into it that perhaps compensation will become more sane. Once the credit crisis is over, things can go back to the way they were.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.