Hostage-Taking

What people mean by the now dreaded phrase “too big to fail” is that large firms hold the people hostage and demand public support when they are in distress using the rhetoric of bombers whose explosives have dead man’s switches: if we go down, we take the hostages with us.  What the government is doing right now is colluding in blackmailing the public for the benefit of the most egregious, failed risk-takers.  With or without an equity share in the institutions whose debts the government takes on, this is really not much more than serving the interests of a relative few at the expense of the many.