It's hard to believe but bankers are now raking in enormous bonuses despite the global financial crisis.

The Financial Times reports that Merrill Lynch, UBS and Citigroup are actually cranking up pay for investment bankers to stop them leaving. Market rates for bankers have been running close to the boom-time highs of two years ago and banks are also offering guaranteed bonuses.

For ordinary income earners and for those who have lost their jobs because of the bank-induced financial crisis, it beggars belief. The banks would argue that it's all about holding on to talent. But in the end, it might have something to do with greed. For bankers, greed comes as naturally as breathing.

How else, for example, would you explain the report of three former investment bankers at Dresdner Kleinwort who are suing their old employer for their bonuses totaling nearly $20 million , despite their unit making huge losses and despite Dresdner being sold to Commerzbank as part of a rescue package put together by the German government. As Bloomberg's Ann Woolner notes, they should be offering apologies instead of demanding reward.

Yes, the financial crisis has not stopped the banks greed. Reuters tells us now that the bankers are working out ways of getting around crimping bonuses in response to the bailout rules of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Instead of bonuses, you just boost the base salaries. Given that the bonuses are six or seven figures and given that the banks have put the world into its greatest crisis since the Depression, it turns all the claims of pay for performance into a joke.