Markets have rebounded, and financial institutions are breathing a sigh of relief.

But it will take some time before it's back to business as usual, especially when it comes to wining and dining clients or rewarding employees.

Insurance giant American International Group was publicly pilloried by Congress, Saturday Night Live, the White House, and Barack Obama over a $440,000 retreat at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort in southern California, just days after collecting $85 billion from taxpayers.

In the wake of the A.I.G. public flogging, bankers and brokers are acting more like Puritans.

Wachovia has canceled an all-expense-paid Greek Isle cruise for 75 employees, and their significant others, of its brokerage firm A.G. Edwards.

The brokers would have set sail on Saturday, but it is a good thing they didn't. How much shuffleboard can you really get in knowing that your company is being taken over in a fire sale?

"With uncertainty in the markets right now, financial advisers have told us that they prefer to remain close to their clients," Wachovia spokesperson Jim Griffin explained.

Of course, after what A.I.G went through, you can expect any financial firm, especially now that the government is investing millions of dollars in it, to think twice.

A.I.G. defended, then canceled its next planned gathering for independent insurance agents, at Half Moon Bay, California. It soon asked the Federal Reserve for $38 billion more.

At first, however, the company, considered defending its right to party in an ad campaign, according to Bloomberg News. But A.I.G.'s public relations consultant, George Sard, in an email sent by mistake to Bloomberg, explained how that would be "a really bad idea."

"To spend the taxpayer's money on an expensive ad campaign to apologize for how you used taxpayer money leaves you open to further attacks,'' he wrote.

In Britain, Barclays is taking heat for a three-day educational event for 320 bankers and their wealthy clients at resort in Italy's celebrity hot spot, Lake Como, that goes for a little under $2,000 a night.

A prominent member of the Conservative Party, William Hague, was criticized in the media for attending the retreat with his wife last week as markets in London and New York plummeted.

The timing is also bad as his party's leader, David Cameron, is trying desperately to distance the Conservatives from financial fat cats responsible for the credit crunch.

To make amends, Conservative Party heads canceled a lavish reception for a thousand guests in London's five-star Grange City Hotel.

Shots of business and party leaders holding up the canapés and champagne promised in the invite wouldn't have made for a good photo opportunity.

Andrea Chalupa

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