In theory that makes sense. But in practice it's hard hunting down the actual effects of something this big. Also, you might not be so happy with the results o

In theory that makes sense. But in practice it's hard hunting down the actual effects of something this big. Also, you might not be so happy with the results of helping those who were impacted. Some of the easiest to find of those who were hurt are those who bought the mis-rated mortgage backed securities. A lot were sold to non-US entities like foreign mutual funds and sovereign wealth funds. Can you imagine how happy everyone in the US would be if a big chunk of the settlement got shipped off to rich foreigners? It might be fair in some sense, but politically it would be awful. Hence, easier to just dump it into some state and/or federal budget's general fund.