From Financial Times, an article on how bailed out CEO's have actually taken a comparatively low pay cut. Problem is taking a pay cut is still not the logical conclusion to years of leveraging your extremely large banking institution on risky, risky bets. "Bank chiefs owe a personal debt to taxpayers"

"What is not hard to argue is that the smorgasbord of government programmes and initiatives have helped ensure the survival of these institutions by restoring investor confidence, in turn boosting their stock prices and the value of the chief executives’ stock holdings.

For instance, Mr Blankfein’s 3.4m shares of Goldman, worth about $168m at one point last year, were worth closer to $623m (€425m, £385m) at Friday’s closing prices. Mr Mack’s 4m Morgan Stanley shares, which were worth as little as $27m, have rebounded to $125m. Mr Dimon’s 11.2m shares of JPMorgan are valued at about $503m these days, up considerably from their recent low of $168m. And Mr Lewis’s 4.7m Bank of America shares, at one point valued at around $15m, are now worth about $83m. These calculations do not reflect the additional increased value of the executives’ stock options and unvested stock awards, which have moved up smartly – at least on paper (they are not tradeable) – as a result of the rise in the banks’ stock prices.

This is not a trivial matter, although it is barely mentioned. Those who find the observation petty or unfair would do well to ask Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ one-time chief executive, if he would be willing to trade places with any of his former Wall Street brethren. Unlike Mr Blankfein and Mr Mack, he could not win Fed approval to convert Lehman into a bank holding company. We all know there was no government bailout for Lehman.

After Lehman filed for bankruptcy a year ago, Mr Fuld’s 10m shares of Lehman plus options – once worth as much as $1bn – were rendered worthless, which seems like the correct price for the stock of a bank that was way overleveraged and took too many foolish risks. “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me,” Mr Fuld testified in front of Congress last October. And we don’t.

But a year later, we still have no good answer as to why the other chief executives were permitted to benefit from the government’s largesse while Mr Fuld could not."

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