The timeline of the most amazing screwup in our lifetimes:
1 - Bear Stearns belly up in March: sold to JP and saved.
2 - Fannie, Freddie start getting in deep water. Issue preferreds, which are bought by local banks at the urging of the Feds.
3 - Fannie, Freddie rescue package put together over the weekend of Sept 6, 7. Emphatically does NOT include rescue of the preferred shareholders. Local banks whose capital ratios might go underwater as a result told "to see their regulator." No kidding.
4 - Sept 8: preferred share market cracks. Of course. We are now well and truly on our way to an epic crisis.
5 - Sept 9: Fitch puts out warning on Lehman, says they may not be able to raise capital in the current environment, said environment of course now including a badly shaken market for preferreds.
6 - The Lehman death spiral begins immediately after. Allowed to fail over the weekend of Sept 13, 14.
7 - Money market funds break the buck. Crisis ensues.
8 - Paulson proposes TARP, and after fleshing out, this is passed by Congress. This destroys any chance of fiscal discipline by anyone in the foreseeable future.
9 - Obama elected, chooses Geithner, world quickly figures out Timmy is not ready for primetime.
...which leaves us where we are now. It's true Obama's only been in office for a little while, but it's also true he hasn't really dealt with the banks the way an FDR would have. The history is there, Sheila Bair was telling him to get it done, so there was no reason not to. But he didn't. So, we're stuck.
As for fiscal discipline, no Democrat is ever going to make the mistake of handing a surplus to a Republican again. Not in any of our lifetimes.