>> It's astonishing how banks (saved with your money) can go home scotch-free, and hedge funds (that will die for their recklessness) get all the blame. The ra

>> It's astonishing how banks (saved with your money) can go home scotch-free, and hedge funds (that will die for their recklessness) get all the blame. The rationale is (not saying I agree with it) that broker dealers' and banks' can cause systemic risk and cause a domino effect. Note that one hedge fund was indeed saved -- AIG-FP, and was given a record $180 billion dollar bailout, albiet on initially punitive terms. Incidentally they were so large (1Trillion USD of exposures, much of it leveraged) that they fell under the category of systemic risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Group#2008_Liquidity_crisis_and_government_bailout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_International_Group#2... That $180B wasn't all though, one could argue that the QE buy-back program purchasing securities at arguably inflated prices was also an additional bailout, but the amount for that is difficult to quantify and difficult to segment beneficiaries for.