From Canada's The Globe and Mail:

Now with hundreds of billions of dollars of stock market value wiped out, pressure is mounting to overhaul an executive compensation system that critics blame for drawing banks into high-risk mortgage investments, with few consequences for the CEOs who steered them there.

"Wall Street, by its nature is high risk and high pay," said David Larcker, an accounting professor and compensation expert at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

"But what happens when the risk goes the other way. Should pay also be adjusted?"

During the mortgage boom, there was a "weird incentive" to take on risk, and top banking executives made "tremendous sums," Prof. Larcker pointed out.

"That's how this mess got made."