If TARP-imposed bonus limits are pushing the best talent away from Wall Street, Citigroup and Bank of America are being hit particularly hard.

That's what CNNMoney says, anyway, as it reports the "brain drain that big banks have worried about ever since the government stepped in to bail out the financial sector appears to be well underway."

Citi and BofA, the Web site notes, are "the two banks that have received the most aid from the government and are subject to the most onerous restrictions on executive compensation."

Among the departed: Ajay Banga, chief executive of Citi's Asia Pacific operations, left for MasterCard, and William Rifkin jumped to JPMorgan Chase. Others have moved onto Blackstone Group, Deutsche Bank, Ladenburg Thalmann, Oppenheimer, Piper Jaffray and Barclays.

The swell is so bad Citi Chairman Dick Parsons has "had to use terms like 'patriotic duty' and the potential of doing 'fascinating' work to convince people to work for the embattled firm," the story says.

President Obama would like to limit senior execs at firms that took TARP to bonuses no more than 33 percent of total compensation. Citi and BofA would have their top 100 salaries vetted by the government.

Then again, maybe it's not the bonus. Maybe it's the stock price. As share prices have sunk, so has the value of many a financial professional's portfolio. Still, CNNMoney suggests firms are specifically targeting BofA and Citi, noting that about a third of Moelis's hires this year came from one of those firms.