Wolf: ... Some of these institutions, do the math, are gonna hand out eight figures 10 million dollars, 15 milion dollars. What if anything should the Obama administration do about this?

Nancy Pfotnehauer: well you know it's a slippery slope because for the companies that took government money, you then have an implied oversight from the government. So for companies who didn't take government money,their shareholders are the ones who should hold them accountable.

Wolf: A lot of these companies have returned the money, the TARP money that they received. Should they at all be restricted in the bonuses that they give out?

Nancy Pfotenhauer: That's a very interesting question. I still believe that there was a value to the money that the taxpayer stepped in to pay the bill. But I think the reason we haven't seen anything happen is not only that it is complicated matter, but 73% of the campaign contributions from the financial services industry according to the Center for Responsible Politics has gone to Democrats this cycle. So you get a lot of talk about crackdowns and and what we end up living with are bailouts.

Wolf: What do you think? What should the president do, if anything, about this?

Begala: Listen to Nancy. Now, I'll never say that again, it will ruin her credibility with the Republicans.

Nancy: It's a first!

Begala: It's a bipartisan scandal. The Bush administration bailed out Wall Street and now apparently the Obama administration is going to protect their bonuses. In Britain, they're taxing these bonuses. Just to put it into perspective, Wolf, I did a little back of the envelope math. There are reports that the bonus pool on Wall Street this year is 150 billion dollars. That's enough to pay for the whole war in Iraq for the whole year and have 30 billion left over. It is enough to pay for in state tuition four years for every college freshman in American. It's enough to pay for 31 million people for health care --- all the uninsured could be covered just for Wall Street bonuses. It's obscene. It is obscene and a decent society, and a Democratic society ought to do something about it.

Wolf: You know Nancy, John Reed the Citigroup founder was quoted in the New York Times as saying this, "There is nothing I've seen that gives me the slightest feeling that these people have learned anything from the crisis ... They just don't get it. They are off in a different world."

Nancy: Well you know it's interesting when you have one person speaking the truth in a room full of folks just saying what will advocate their own cause. I think that this may be the case in this instance because it is just beyond the pale to me that taxpayers could have funneled this much money into these institutions and the idea that there is not even any interaction or regulatory oversight.

Now, I want to say that the danger here is that once you government gets involved in the business here, it can get rather fun. They enjoy manipulation and their incompetence is legion, but the bottom line is they took taxpayer dollars ...

Wolf: But Ken Feinberg the pay czar as they call him, he can determine how much money salaries and bonuses should be available to companies that still owe the taxpayers money but once these companies return the loans his responsiblity goes away.

Begala: Right. To me it would be three steps. If you're still on the hook for taxpayers money then the pay czar should control your pay and that's how it should be. If you've gotten it in the past, even if you've paid it back I think it ought to be confiscatory tax rates on those bonuses. Not on everybody who makes a lot of money but those Wall Street bonuses because they did, after all ruin the whole country and destroy the economy. But over time rather than taxing is to empower shareholders. There have been some talk about laws that would be "safe or pay" that would make shareholders, give shareholders the right to vote on compensation.

Nancy: Yes, yes.

Begala: All congress is talking about is symbolic votes. I want a real vote so shareholders can say "no you cannot pay executives that much."

Wolf: A lot of those companies that repaid the federal government as you know, they got money from AIG indirectly from the federal government gave hundreds of billions to AIG which in turn paid off a lot of these companies the insurance money they supposedly needed. And they're not repaying AIG for that ...

Nancy: No and it's a very incestuous thing. And remember Tim Geithner helped the AIG bonuses get in that bill, you had Chris Dodd protect them and make them stay in there and now you have the House legislation that came forward, I don't think the massive taxation is the way to go forward, I think you should approach it at the front end. But instead of that the Senate instead of acting on that are hollowing it out and instead are putting up Mr Reid's health care bill.