Four of Wall Street's biggest banks will this week reveal plans to pay their staff a total of close to $100 billion (£62 billion), reigniting the row over bankers' bonuses.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are all expected to announce bumper pay awards for staff alongside full-year results.
Wall Street's big payouts come as the remuneration committee at Royal Bank of Scotland prepares to meet this week to determine the size of its bonus pot.
RBS - 84%-owned by British taxpayers - has indicated it wants to pay its investment bankers about £1.5 billion in bonuses, even though it will make a loss this year at group level. The figure could creep higher if it attempts to shelter its bankers from the impact of Alistair Darling's 50% tax on bonuses.
Lord Myners, the City minister, has called a meeting of global finance ministers and regulators in Downing Street this month to discuss other levies that could be introduced to prevent future crises. George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, said this weekend he would support calls for a new global charge on banks.
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America's bonus payouts come days after President Barack Obama revealed plans for a windfall tax on banks in an effort to curb the "obscene" bonus culture.
Anger over the huge payments will be heightened by the fact that many of the banks are not profitable.
Of the four due to report figures this week only Goldman is expected to post a profit at the net income level, according to a consensus of analyst forecasts.The losses blow a hole in the argument that the bonuses represent pay for performance.
However, all the banks are expected to show large gains in their investment banking divisions, which have been boosted by financial stimulus operations orchestrated by governments around the world.
Citi, the last of the big banks to pay back the cash it received from the US government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, is expected to clock up losses of about $8.5 billion.
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Yet it is expected to pay out about $5 billion in bonuses to its investment bankers. It is expected to reveal it has paid its staff more than $30 billion in salaries, benefits and bonuses.
JP Morgan, the third-biggest bank in America, posted a huge jump in profits on Friday to almost $12 billion. It will pay nearly $6 billion in bonuses.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is rumoured to be planning bonus payouts worth close to the amounts paid out in 2007, the last boom year for bankers. It is expected to post a loss of about $1.2 billion at the net income level, based on analyst forecasts.
Morgan Stanley is expected to lose about $850m but is still expected to pay out about $15 billion in salaries, bonuses and benefits. The figure will amount to about half the bank's revenues, according to analysts - the ratio is likely to be the highest on Wall Street.
Goldman is believed to have slashed payments it made to staff in the fourth quarter but is still expected to pay out between $19 billion and $20 billion - worth about $660,000 a head to its 30,000 employees.
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Senior executives at Goldman have said they will take their bonuses in shares, which do not show up in the "compensation and benefits" line reported by the bank until they have fully vested.