Respectfully, nobody is convinced that Wall Street's recent (as of Sept 2009) upsurge is permanent, and no business would be foolish enough to grant across-the-board pay raises or bonuses, until their investors and creditors have been paid, first.

As far as "limiting" bonuses to management, that depends on how the managers' contracts are written, which, more often than not, favors the individual rather than the company, often to shareholders' chagrin!

It is doubtful that large bonuses were responsible for this last down turn of Wall Street.

According to the NY Times "there is little evidence that big pay — or the incentives connected to it — caused the financial train wreck that sent the world into recession."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31norris.html

So why are we so obsessed with limiting bonuses and salaries if that had little to do with the crisis?

Well, for one thing, some of the companies handing out the big pay checks still owe the taxpayers' a lot of money. I have no problem asking for the tax money back before bonuses are handed out. On the other hand, if no tax money is at issue, the government should not be in the business of setting salaries or bonuses, in my opinion.

YES! One of the things which angers the general populous of nearly every developed country is the greed which surrounds the corporate sector, as it is expressed in corporate bonuses, especially when it is perceived that those bonuses are not deserved. It's nice to be given a bonus on top of your normal salary as appreciation for having done a good job, but a lot of these guys are getting millions when they've done an absolutely lousy job too!
Case in point: I heard only a few days ago of a famous major airline here which recently got rid of its former CEO. His payout was the usual X millions of dollars, but in order to give it to him, the airline sacrificed the shareholders' dividends, (ie: they did not pay the shareholders at all, which allowed them to afford the CEO's payout !!) I couldn't believe it when I was told. I thought something like that would be illegal, and it certainly should be. How dare a company even think of treating its shareholders in that fashion! I hope that they all sell their shares, and leave the company high and dry, but of course that won't happen.
Companies today are so blinded by greed for the almighty dollar that fairness and what's right and wrong don't count any more. Even human lives don't mean anything in business now; they just put a dollar value on it. The airlines are a perfect example of this. The working men and women struggle to get by on low incomes set by the company while the bozo's at the top do hardly anything and get millions. It's wrong!
Yes, the governments should legislate to limit corporate bonuses, and the companies should be made to justify to the government the size of every bonus payout.

No. They're contractually obligated to pay those salaries and benefits. If I started a job with a company and they agreed to pay me $50,000 a year, they should pay me that. If they received Federal stimulus/bailout money and some taxpayers think I'm making too much money, that doesn't give the federal government the right to undo the pre-existing contract I have with that company.