Bonuses might be down but the subprime mess has not stopped the party on wall street.

True, some are "doing it hard". After Morgan Stanley, for example, announced it would write down its mortgage assets by $9.4 billion and suffer its first quarterly loss fueled by losses in subprime mortgages and other assets, the news is that its chief executiveJohn Mack won't be getting his bonus this year. Don't feel too sorry for him. That was after last year's $41 million package.

As Peter Cohan writes in Blogging Stocks the bonus cuts are strategic and in any case, the CEOs foregoing bonuses this year aren't exactly out on Struggle Street.

"Why are they doing this? Because it's going to make it easier for them to stiff lots of employees who they don't think will be essential to making a profit in 2008 and 2009. Investment banks have less bonus money to go around and they will try hard to pay enough to their top performers to keep them from jumping ship. If they can keep these top performers around, then they will be able to reap the rewards in the future. In the meantime, those no-bonus CEOs will need to make do with the hundreds of millions they've gotten in the last few years."

Still, it really depends on where you are. Wall Street's year-end bonuses still climbed 14 percent, reports Bloomberg. That comes right at the time when shareholders suffered their biggest declines since 2002 and fourth-quarter earnings have crashed to their lowest level in at least a decade.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein is reportedly set to get a $70 million bonus and bonuses at the the investment firm are coming out at $600,000 per employee, reports Reuters.

It's party time in other companies. Despite the problems in the market, the Corporate Library reveals that the salaries of CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index have risen 23 per cent, reports Market Watch. Significantly, even CEOs think they are overpaid, according to the latest survey.