For the last two years running, bankers in London, New York and Tokyo have reaped record-breaking bonuses, sending bountiful ripples through their local economies in the form of everything from gasp-worthy bar bills to astronomical property prices. Many movers and shakers, buoyed by a record $3,300 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions activity globally in the first half of this year, were hoping that the coming bonus season would prove three’s the charm.

That was, of course, until America’s subprime mortgage crisis sent the global economy into a penny-pinching credit crunch. Now, staff at the world’s most powerful investment banks are bracing themselves for profit falls in the second half of the year of up to 70 percent compared to the first half, which is expected to spawn job cuts of around 10 percent across the board. Even for the majority who hang onto their jobs, this won’t be a green Christmas. Recruitment experts are predicting that average bonuses will fall by 10 to 15 percent, with credit bankers likely to see 25 percent drops in their total compensation packages--meaning, for top traders, over $1 million less clinking into their bank accounts.

Some geographies will suffer more than others. Tokyo’s traders are likely to emerge relatively rich thanks to the fact that their profits are driven largely by the rapid economic growth in developing Asia. Indeed, even as global markets floundered last month, China’s key Shanghai stock exchange, which is up more than 100 percent this year, rose to an all-time record high. On Wall Street, however, Christmas stockings are doomed to be on the light side. Heavily dependent on the domestic US economy, New York’s bankers will be battered by high exposure to subprime mortgages, the credit crunch and the overall slowdown in America’s economic growth.

For London’s bankers, the picture could be even worse. An explosion in securitization activity (most notably, collateralized debt obligations) in Europe’s financial hub over the past year has left even more European CDOs exposed to US subprime derivatives than American CDOs, according to a recent calculation from Fitch, the rating agency. "Our view is that London bonuses will be down by more than 16 percent," says Jonathan Said, senior economist at the London-based Center for Economics and Business Research. The fallout is already hitting home. The newest stats show that property prices in the London borough that includes the chic neighborhood of Primrose Hill fell by a whopping 7.7 percent in August—as prices across the capital dropped for the first time in over two years—wiping £50,000 off the price of an average home. What a lump of coal.