Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Robert S. Kaplan, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner who now teaches management at Harvard Business School, predicted that public anger at Wall Street will continue to grow as joblessness gets worse.

“Populist rage will be greater than it is today because unemployment will probably be higher and so we’ll have more tension and angst than we have today,” Kaplan, 52, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by the Aspen Institute in New York.

Kaplan said he doubts Congress will pass financial regulatory reform in the next six months. In the meantime, regulators will do their best to control leverage and other risks within financial institutions, Kaplan said.

Goldman Sachs, where Kaplan worked for 22 years before retiring in 2006, will probably structure compensation this year so that more is deferred and more is paid in stock, Kaplan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. The company, which set a record for Wall Street pay in 2007, put aside $16.7 billion to pay employees in the first nine months of the year.

“You’re going to see much more in equity and deferred over a number of years,” Kaplan said in the interview following the Aspen Institute panel. “As long as unemployment is inching towards 10 percent, it is fair that the public is quite upset and angry at Wall Street.”

Kaplan, a senior adviser to Boston-based private equity firm Berkshire Partners LLC, said the government should increase regulatory oversight of capital levels and leverage, or reliance on borrowed money, at financial institutions.

“They have to have enough capital to make it through a stress test, through stressful periods, and I think regulation is necessary to ensure that happens,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 5, 2009 00:00 EST