At Bear Stearns, where Jimmy Cayne has resigned as chief executive - I have the impression that this will come as a surprise to a lot of people who assumed that he had done the decent thing and resigned a long time ago. He's staying on as non-executive chairman - which has drawn a bit of criticism.

...At BarCap, where Grant Kvalheim (you last saw him being gradually eased away from credit trading) has finally resigned, leaving Jerry del Missier in nominal charge - but in the unenviable position of having his ultimate superior, Barclays CEO Bob Diamond, doubling up as his co-president, filling Kvalheim's shoes for the moment by taking over the investment banking business. Del Missier has rates, equity and, as mentioned, credit trading. An interesting situation.

Further down the pile, DBRS has shut down its entire European operation; and there's speculation that Citigroup could cut thousands of jobs later this month.

On cue, Raghuram Rajan weighs in on executive pay in today's FT:

compensation practices in the financial sector are deeply flawed and probably contributed to the ongoing crisis...Alpha is quite hard to generate since most ways of doing so depend on the investment manager possessing unique abilities – to pick stocks, identify weaknesses in management and remedy them, or undertake financial innovation. Such abilities are rare. How then can untalented investment managers justify their pay? Unfortunately, all too often it is by creating fake alpha – appearing to create excess returns but in fact taking on hidden tail risks, which produce a steady positive return most of the time as compensation for a rare, very negative, return...

True alpha can be measured only in the long run and with the benefit of hindsight – in the same way as the acumen of someone writing earthquake insurance can be measured only over a period long enough for earthquakes to have occurred. Compensation structures that reward managers annually for profits, but do not claw these rewards back when losses materialise, encourage the creation of fake alpha. Significant portions of compensation should be held in escrow to be paid only long after the activities that generated that compensation occur.

The managers who blew a big hole in Morgan Stanley’s balance sheet probably earned enormous bonuses in the past – Mr Mack certainly did...

I'd add just one minor quibble. The managers in question may well have received enormous bonuses. It's far less certain, given what's happened since, that they truly earned them.