The major news outlets are reporting that Obama has mandated that banks that get "exceptional financial recovery assistance," from the government can't pay their senior executives more than $500,000 in annual compensation. The coverage in the news is focusing mostly on the rhetoric surrounding the measure ("Obama says the bonuses are 'shameful'!") rather than the fine print which, as usual, turns out to be pretty important.Brian Beutler gets into enough detail to find that a) the measure isn't retroactive, and b) banks can get up to $25 billion under the existing Capital Purchase Program without counting as recieving "exceptional" assistance. This could be quite a bit less restrictive for banks than the headlines suggest.