The most basic premise of capitalism is that those that participate in it recognize that the risking of capital, in order to have the chance of making a profit, implicitly means the corresponding risk of that capital being lost or damaged, significantly. The very first thing that should be part of the capitalistic system is that it should be fair to all those participating in it; in which no one party or parties are accorded more respect, or materially different rules, and none should be provided with an ironclad guarantee by the government, that no matter their fiscal irresponsibility, or mistakes so made, that they will not be permitted to fail. Yet, in looking at the recent history of the biggest banks in America we find that as reported by forbes.com, that "The Special Inspector General for TARP summary of the bailout says that the total commitment of government is $16.8 trillion dollars…" Clearly, this is demonstrative proof that if a particular institution is large enough and considered to be important enough, while also apparently having an undue and unseemly influence upon government policies, for whatever reasons, than these banking institutions thereby are permitted to run their businesses in an unsound manner, demonstrated by their overleveraging of their balance sheets in their drive to make that easy money, while ignoring the risks thereof, only to thereby get bailed out by that government; of which, that government can't even successfully negotiate fair terms that would benefit the taxpayers to that government, but rather kowtows to those banking institutions so that the top executive offices are still grossly overcompensated, as well as favoring those common stockholders that did not divest from an institution that was tottering on the very brink of insolvency, if not so saved by that government.
It isn't fair, that some are saved by governmental bailouts while others, are ignored and thereby subsequently fail. This inconsistency is proof positive that this government clearly plays favorites. Further to the point, any institution, no matter whether or not it is vital to this country or not, should never see itself permitted to get to the point that is considered to be so large or so important of an institution that its failure would thereby result in catastrophic circumstances to the people at large. After all, we are taught at a very early age, not to place all of our eggs into one basket, so that, one would think, that this government would understand the importance of following that same sort of sensible wisdom, but plainly does not.
In point of fact, anytime that any government of, for, and by the people, behaves in a manner in which some of those people and some of those institutions as authorized by the representatives of the people, are immune to the "creative destruction" that capitalism invariably entails, than that country will thereby suffer the ill effects of having favored certain people and specific institutions to make those few effectively above economic law, which is a bastardization of what capitalism is supposed to represent. So then, the further that this country goes down the road of unfairly picking out economic winners and losers, and bailing out some as compared to others; the further it strays from comprehending that those that cheat the system, for the benefit of a select few, are corrupting the integrity of this great nation, and thereby sowing the seeds to thereby reap the coming whirlwind of its horrible humbling correction.