I can respect the clarity of your position, SoCal. I'm squarely in the camp of those who feel it was right to bail out the banks in order to protect the larger society from the ripple effects of the criminal actions of a corrupt few.

The solution was a quick fix and a lazy one though. I'm sure that someone could have been prosecuted for the mortgage fraud, even if Glass Steagall was shot down. You see, it wasn't just home owners and aspiring home owners that were conned with tricky mortgage contracts, it was the selling of mortgage backed securities around the world to public and possibly private investors in a fraudulent way. It might have even been Moody's that rubber stamped the MBSs AAA+ knowing they were really junk bond nuclear waste under a different name. If it wasn't Moody's, then it was someone equally as "trustworthy" and prestigious, like Standard and Poor. (Actually it was both of those firms and others.) Either way, it's RICO. So lots of people should have gone down...and the homeowners should have been bailed out [sooner] and not just the banks.


"For us, rubbin'out a Mustache was just like makin' way for a new building, like we was in the construction business."