I was once as enamored with the financial services industry as are you.
The TARP was supposedly paid back but it represented only tiny portion of the taxpayer hand outs that were given to Wall St investment and commercial banks espec, TBTF. These banks should have been forced into receivership, all executive management purged and shareholder value reduced to zero instead of giving bonuses and sending taxpayers the bill for too big to fail and creating the current debacle. Capitalism is about taking risks where the risk takers and shareholders (not taxpayers) pay for their mistakes.
Their accounting schemes and capital reserves are marked to fantasy not market. They were given the right to make up their own accounting. The Fed Reserve is their partner not regulator. It hands them trillions of free money and even gives the wives of the bank executives a piggy bank with which to partake in their own Party. Google: TALF Wall St wives
The Wall St version of capitalism is more about crony capitalism where the public takes it in the ear and the bankers take the gains with the help of Bernanke. Instead of playing with their money, they are playing with taxpayers.
The Federal Reserve has been the problem and Greenspan and others are working for the banks not for the USA. Wall St has become a casino club for the benefit of members and deal makers, and not as efficient allocators of capital for productive ventures. It’s about the deals and deal makers and nothing else. It’s like a bigger version of Solyndra but for those connected to Wall St.. George Kaiser of Solyndra was connected too.
When the Gov't mandates something like CRA which was an attack on banks and profits I believe Gov't should play a part in repairing the fallout.
You think that I believe the financial community sacrosant; I believe that you may believe the taxpayer sacrosant (which for years backed the Gov't CRA policies which, in effect, penalized the banks for profits made on quality loans by pushing them to make toxic loans).
Yes, there were many in the financial community who abused the system which resulted from CRA-type law once it was in place. However, many in the financial community did not. When you say things like ALL executive management should have been purged (would you have preferred that Frank & Dodd or some other Gov't official had appointed new leadership...much of the leadership resigned as it was) I see the broad brush you paint with.