And when corporate executives pocket multimillion-dollar bonuses for driving up profits by slashing workers, some ask whether the pendulum has swung too far.

A $1 million paycheck can feel paltry after one reads about multimillion-dollar bonuses.

Smart boards of directors will begin to question multimillion-dollar bonuses for C.E.O.'s whose main managerial skill is the ability to inflict maximum suffering on senior employees.

Not everyone on Wall Street is getting multimillion-dollar bonuses.

However, the guidelines are highly unusual and traders, especially those who trade in derivatives, worry that multimillion-dollar bonuses may be threatened.

Jurors heard about multimillion-dollar secret bonuses and payoffs to directors and mistresses - not to mention the $6,000 shower curtain, which belongs in the Smithsonian.

The punishing hours, the multimillion-dollar bonuses, the celebrity status accorded to the top guns all helped to reinforce this.

Trading was so profitable in 2001 that just before Enron's collapse some of its most successful traders received multimillion-dollar bonuses.

"Flossie," they said, "the polls show Americans hate to see a wife pulling down multimillion-dollar bonuses from investment banking when she can't even cook macaroni and cheese."

In a country where chief executives take multimillion-dollar bonuses while demanding givebacks from their workers, we need more progressivity in our tax code, not less.