As comfortable as this logic feels, the fallout would have been even worse had the banks been left to fail. That's basically what we did in the 1930s. Didn't tu

As comfortable as this logic feels, the fallout would have been even worse had the banks been left to fail. That's basically what we did in the 1930s. Didn't turn out so well. Some sort of bailout, unfortunately, needed to happen to keep the world from going completely Mad Max. But the bailout should have come with conditions: new regulations, enforcement with actual teeth, and trust-busting breakups of institutions on the receiving end. None of that happened. For the record: prosecutions of top execs, while warranted in many cases, are little more than sideshows. They're basically conducted for appearances. They do nothing to stop the next CEOs from going right back to business as usual. What really matter are antitrust policies, regulations, and enforcement.