> The gross unfairness of it all. I mean, it is bad enough that the failures in charge of the banking system got bailed out despite being incompetent at their jobs, but the average person had to guarantee them their high status role in society? It is a sick joke.
This is a very valid narrative, although if you say it in public people will call you a socialist. It applies to people like Fred Goodwin of RBS (eventually stripped of knighthood) and Sean Quinn of AIB (who did actually serve jail time).
> And it isn't like bankruptcy is that terrible. All the physical assets still exist. There is still food
I think you're really underestimating how terrible "retail banking stops functioning" would have been in the short term. The loans allowed the problems to be addressed over the medium term. "Every retail bank has ceased trading" is a problem you have about three days to solve before the inability of people to buy food and petrol starts a much larger collapse.
Besides, some of the bailouts were very close to "flat-pack" bankruptcies. Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley were fully nationalized! Equity holders lost everything, that's a bankruptcy!
(Americans will say "who" there, but again: it was a global crisis. It more resembles climate change. It's very difficult to say that any individual is responsible for it, but somehow Australia ends up on fire as a result of unsustainable emissions, and the banking system collapsed as a result of unsustainable lending emissions.)
So your argument to the valid narrative of gross unfairness and people being above the law is to look the other way because you are afraid of being called a "socialist"? Holding criminals accountable for bad and reckless behavior is not socialism by any definition of the word.
It's not my solution, I'm not in charge of the SEC! I'm broadly supportive of anti-inequality measures against the financial industry. It's just that if you say that the peanut gallery will call it socialist.
I would however like people to be a bit more specific about what they think the crime was, who specifically committed what, and whether it was actually illegal at the time. It's a word people love to throw around. It's not actually illegal to make poor business decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%A1n_Quinn for example, while his misconduct cost the collapse of AIB, the thing he was actually jailed for was failing to comply with court orders.