Bonuses at Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Goldman Hit $30B

Recession? What recession? Some Wall Street firms are not feeling any pain this year as record bonuses at just three of the top firms are likely to hit an eye-popping $30 billion. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, the three biggest banks to be bailed out by the feds, will dish out bonuses to 119,000 workers at an amount averaging $250,000 for each.

That's about five times the median household income last year in the US. “Wall Street is beginning to resemble Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind: ‘Quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’” says a compensation expert. “It doesn’t seem as if political threat, disastrous PR, envy, rising unemployment rates, and home repossessions is enough to get any of these people to refuse the bonuses they have ‘earned.’” (More Goldman Sachs stories.)