It may still take a while before Wall Street finally accepts that it won't get paid.

At the moment, as their bony fingers fondle the new taxpayer loot, the firms appear to believe that they might still fool the public into thinking that bonus money isn't taxpayer money.

"We've responded appropriately to the attorney general's request for information about 2008 bonus pools," a Citigroup Inc spokeswoman told Bloomberg News recently, "and confirmed that we will not use TARP funds for compensation." But as the Bloomberg report noted, "she declined to elaborate".