How heartening to read the report in the Detroit Free Press that executives at General Motors and Chrysler will get pay cuts of up to 25%. Just to make sure the bailouts aren't feathering the nests of executives at these failed companies. But it's a different story with the banks and other financial services firms.

The Economist reports that despite the fact that Citigroup and Bank of America lost billions of dollars in the last quarter, they still ended up paying a combined $13.7 billion in compensation during the same quarter. In other words, executives got 27% of the core equity while shareholders got absolutely nothing.

And attempts to regulate compensation at financial firms will struggle to get any traction because as The Wall Street Journal tells us, the new rules from the US Government do not extend to hedge funds, private-equity funds and other financial firms beyond the reach of the new curbs.