The way I see it there is no good reason not to issue out bonuses. It is true that many managed funds were extremely over leveraged, but so were some of the firms own prop desks. In those cases some of the same vilified fund managers and their bosses also lost obscene amounts of money.

I believe that the investor should be responsible for some due diligence as to where they invest their money. Some funds actually require a percentage of investment in the managed fund from those whom have made partner in the firm, to ensure that their own interests are invested in the performance of the fund. For those people a loss for you is a loss for them.

As far as lower level fund managers and analysts, for many their official salary is but a fraction of their compensation, with bonuses making up the rest. If a fund had positive performance and cleared specific benchmarks in performance of course they should get their bonus. If one lets a wave of "let's get the rich" mentality to set in, even when they performed well, you will see a bleeding out of financial talent from U.S. institutions to foreign ones, and then don't be surprised if the performance of your fund suffers over the long run, even in the good times.

The guidelines for bonuses are established beforehand they aren't made up as they go along. If you're an investor that feel uneasy about bonuses, do the due diligence before you invest on how they structure their bonuses. If you don;t like what you see, don't invest in it. If they meet their performance goals there is no reason to deny them a bonus. Only lack of performance should determine that, not public perception or political pressures.