CEOs Finding Coal, Not Bonuses, in Stockings This Year

"I think he actually did believe that he wanted $10 million and that he deserved it," said Andrew Ross Sorkin, a business reporter with the New York Times. "Given he saved the firm from the brink."

CEOs of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, UBS and Morgan Stanley aren't getting Christmas bonuses this year.

(ABC News/AP)

But some experts say Thain and other like him just did their jobs, and shouldn't be compensated on top of their already sizable salaries.

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"I think it's outrageous," said James F. Reda, a compensation consultant based in New York. "It's all part of the old line thinking that the CEO should get a certain amount of money."

Sorkin, too, doubted that real change had come to Wall Street.

"I'm not sure they actually get it yet," he said. "I think we're seeing them do things to make us feel like we get it."

"Come 2009," he added, "we're going to be back in the same place."