Quote from zdreg:
saving zombie banks and their executives is kicking the can down the road. and rewarding the incompetent. these banks should have allowed a natural death. other banks would have been created out of the ashes of the failed banks. instead of allowing the economy to heal naturally you are giving it the economy the equivalent of steroids. there may have been stabilization on the surface but under- neath these financial institutions continue to exist not as a benefit to the economy but to maintain the jobs of highly paid executives. jamie dimon of jp morgan chase is the perfect example. the latest loss in trading, approximately 6 billion took place because he understands that the FED will always bail him out.
The whole point of our economic system to is distribute standard of living in a manner consistent with our moral value system; not some crazy ideology about lazziez faire.
The fed did let hundreds of banks fail. Should they have let all the banks except JPM and Wells Fargo fail? That's where we were headed. I don't think you understand what was happening. If they hadn't done something everything could have collapsed. Even if you owned physical gold it would have been useless. You couldn't barter it for bread. The bread company couldn't get financing to pay for its flour. Things were pretty bad. What the fed did was give a sick body some blood. Overtime the banks, etc. will heal themselves. Notice how they all were able to pay the fed back quickly? It was because the fed acted as the loanshark who prevented the global margin call. The banks can and will earn their way out of their losses. It will take time and the fed is allowing the body to heal itself.
We can argue the merits of why things got to where it did, but the Fed absolutely had to do what they did given that we were all in that situation.
Regarding compensation, I don't think the Fed cared at all about helping the bank executives, and I think they care even less now as the gross incompetence at all banks at all levels becomes better understood.
While I don't know what exactly was going on with this Iskil thing, my bet is that it started as a hedging program and the head trader decided to maximize his bonus. That or it was outright fraud (Soc Gen style). But you are seeing the implementation of new regulations to prevent this from happening again.