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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The government’s plan to tax Wall Street’s bonus bounty is shaping up to be nothing more than a pipe dream.

Hoping to ride the wave of populist outrage against financial firms like Goldman Sachs, lawmakers have been hard at work hatching legislative schemes aimed at reining in bonuses at firms that received billions of dollars in taxpayer aid.

Bonus, given again. Why so much to handle money? What did he and all the others do to desire that big of a bonus? A lot of Americans do a good job every day and we are lucky we get paid. I didn’t understand why they have to get so much for a bonus.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Goldman Sachs stunned many in the Wall Street community Friday by awarding chief executive Lloyd Blankfein $9 million as his year-end bonus, far less than many were anticipating, and none of it in cash.

Following weeks of speculation about what the top executive at Wall Street’s leading investment bank would take home as his discretionary pay for 2009, the company revealed in a securities filing it was paying Blankfein 58,381 shares of company restricted stock.

Big bonus,is he worth it? No one is worth that kind of bonus just because he works with money.
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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon will take home a nearly $16 million bonus in restricted stock and options for leading the bank to a big profit last year.

In a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, the New York City-based bank said Dimon would collect nearly 200,000 shares of restricted stock and more than a half million in options.

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NEW YORK – JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Friday announced a record $9.3 billion payday for its investment-banking employees, setting the stage for competitors like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to also make eye-popping payouts.

On a per employee basis, JPMorgan investment bankers, sales staff and traders, on average, are set to make about $379,000 for 2009, up more than $100,000 from 2008, when the broader financial sector was mired in crisis.

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NEW YORK (Fortune) — The odds aren’t on its side, but a bonus tax could happen in the United States too.

The United Kingdom this week slapped a 50% tax on bankers’ bonuses above about $40,000. The one-time tax will be paid by all banks with employees in the country. France pledged it would adopt the same policy, while Germany’s chancellor called the idea “charming.”

Still, the bonus tax seems like a long shot on this side of the Atlantic, where bankers wield immense power. But when Wall Street starts handing out giant year-end paychecks at a time of 10% unemployment, all the campaign donations in the world may not keep legislators facing tough re-election fights from turning on their banker chums.

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WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s pay czar is limiting the cash compensation for executives at companies that received the largest taxpayer bailouts to $500,000.

The 25th through the 100th top earners at Citigroup, GMAC, American International Group and General Motors also must take more than half their compensation in stock, and at least half must be delayed for three or more years, said Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s Special Master for Executive Compensation.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — In the end, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg’s hardest case was AIG.

The troubled insurer lobbied hard to let three of its executives keep their bonuses.

AIG told Feinberg that three executives, who were entitled to large retention payments, were particularly critical to the company’s long-term financial success and should be able to keep their bonuses.

Feinberg said Thursday that he relented in the case of AIG even though he was able to pare down similar pay clauses at the other six companies in his purview.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Treasury Department, after missing an opportunity to rein in controversial bonuses to AIG employees last year, is now pressing the bailed out insurer to reduce a $198 million bonus pool, according to an overseer’s report released Tuesday.

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general of the $700 billion bailout program, said that Treasury pay czar Kenneth Feinberg has recommended to AIG that the full $198 million not be paid out in full.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — AIG Chief Executive Robert Benmosche’s $10.5 million annual pay package has been formally approved by Obama administration pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.

According to a letter to Treasury’s compensation committee dated Oct. 2, Feinberg said Benmosche’s package, $4 million of which is in stock options, is comparable to that of other CEOs.

Benmosche, who took over the bailed out insurer’s reins in August, will take home $3 million in cash. His “stock salary” will come in equally divisible, bimonthly payments of common shares. Under the terms of his pay deal, he can’t sell those shares until August 2014.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Bank of America and regulators once again urged a federal judge to uphold a $33 million settlement tied to the disclosure of Merrill Lynch bonuses.

In two separate court filings made Wednesday, both the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission defended the proposed settlement the pair struck in early August.

The settlement followed an SEC investigation into bonus payments made to Merrill executives earlier this year. BofA announced it was buying Merrill on the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed last September. The deal was completed in January.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Use any metaphor you want: the ticking clock, sands running through the hourglass or pages falling away from the calendar. The fact is, time is running out to claim the $8,000 first-time homebuyers tax credit.

Passed earlier this year as part of the economic stimulus package, the credit is good for up to $8,000, or 10% of the purchase price, and applies to people who have not owned a home in the previous three years. (There are some income restrictions.) The best part: Unlike a similar program from 2008, the credit does not have to be repaid.

The bad part: It ends on Dec. 1.

Because it usually takes around 90 days to close on a house after a contract is signed, buyers have very little time left to act. As of Thurs., Aug. 27, there were only 96 days left before the credit ends.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Last year was a bad one for most chief executives — but not for the top 10 highest paid CEOs.

Seven chief executives took home more than $100 million in 2008, and three others had paydays that topped $70 million, according to a report released Friday by The Corporate Library.

According to the report, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman was the highest paid CEO in 2008, taking home $702,440,573 in salary and stock options. The head of the financial services giant vested nearly $700 million worth, or 25% of the stock options he was granted after taking Blackstone (BX) public in 2007.