Bankers made an awful lot of money for themselves in the bull market. And when many people felt flush, that seemed OK. But today, Wall Street shares blame for the economic meltdown. Several financial companies have imploded. Others have teetered on the brink. Unemployment is at almost 10 percent. And despite all this, bankers are making almost what they used to.

According to the bonus report that New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo released last month, compensation, which rose at many banks between 2003 and 2006, has stayed at those levels since the beginning of the crisis in 2007. Bonus payments for 2008 at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase were greater than the banks' net income, even though their performance plummeted. At Bank of America, compensation and benefit payments increased from more than $10 billion to more than $18 billion from 2003 and 2006. In 2008, when the bank’s net income fell from $14 billion to $4 billion, its compensation stuck there. Ditto for Citigroup.

Despite the ongoing public frustration regarding compensation, banks are going back to business as usual—in fact, they barely strayed from it. Goldman announced it would increase compensation by 33 percent after reporting strong earnings in July. Citi also said in June it would increase its salaries by 50 percent to offset slashed bonuses—as a retention incentive.

Friday is the deadline for the so-called comp czar, Kenneth Feinberg, will receive compensation proposals from a handful of major banks, and review them over the next two months. His goal: to cap salaries and make sure the institutions shift away from short-term incentives that encourage too much risk. For example, he suggests that bonuses should be put in escrow accounts and paid to bankers once the deals they have made prove to be solid and return generating.

All of which raises a question: What should an investment banker earn?

Not this much, say some insiders. Wall Street has a handful of people who can validate astronomical salaries, the way baseball stars can, says Bill Feingold, former vice president of proprietary convertible trading at Goldman Sachs and author of the forthcoming book The Undoing of Cowardice. “A small number of players are at the top of their game—not only the most skilled but the bigger attraction that fans will come see,” he says. The underlings making $1 million to $2 million are interchangeable paper pushers, he says, worth 10 to 30 percent of what they’re being paid.

“And bonuses should be for good years,” he says. “In a bad year, your bonus should be that you get to keep your job.”

Unsurprisingly, many bankers believe they deserve every penny they make because they take risks, work long hours, and bring business relationships thanks to their reputation. The banks argue that compensation is determined by competition and that they can’t afford to lose their employees to rivals.

“People think there is a conspiracy among bankers to take money, but it’s market driven,” says Steve Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “Good people are worth a lot. If you don’t pay them, they won’t work for you. And if you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys.”

Kaplan goes further, saying that the impending danger with bailed-out banks is that if they can’t repay TARP—and thus can’t escape the Fed’s compensation restrictions—they will simply unravel as bankers defect en masse and chose to go to shops that pay.