Marc,
Exactly what I said about the federal government getting every last penny of taxes.
But, as much as I respect you, you have bought into that red herring put out by the mainstream media and the "lackeys" in congress. It was not the banks that brought on the financial crisis. It was Fannie and Freddie making junk mortgages to anyone with a pulse. I remember the days when you ACTUALLY had to qualify for one of those loans. The banks were just bundling the loans and selling them on the market to willing buyers, as they have done for decades. After all, they had a "quasi-government" guarantee backing each and every loan. And Barney Frank sat there telling all who would listen that there was nothing to worry about with Fanny and Freddie. Mystery to me why he is still in office. If that had happened in the business world, he would be in prison.
Please do not think this is a political rant. I spent 42 years in the banking business (most in management), and our bank had millions of dollars of mortgage backed securities (that is what securities backed by quasi-federal government guarantees are called). As it turns out the federal government ended up pumping billions of dollars into Fannie and Freddie to support the institutions so that the securities would not default. So I guess they were not really quasi, but were actually government backed. It would have been devastating for the entire banking system had those securities gone into default. These are the facts for anyone who wants to research them.
Greg