>Sure, populist shows of retribution weren't prioritised. Keep in mind the time frames within which TARP was passed.

I don't think anyone is asking for populist retribution[0]. I'm asking for fraud, gross negligence, financial impropriety and a host of other actual things that happened to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that would mean going after executives and boardrooms, where the decisions were made. Even by this point fining corporations is a slap on the wrist. Culpability is with the decision makers. That means executives and boardrooms.

Conversely, upon further review, it also means at least a few dozen regulators needed to be removed from their posts and investigations should have been opened into those failures too, to a much broader extent than they were.

>Based on what law did you want these binding legal agreements invalidated?

They should have made it a condition of accepting the TARP funds. I'm not surprised it wasn't (though I'm getting conflicting information when I go to look this up, there appears to be an optional provision that allowed the government to elect to do so, but its unclear if it made it into the final bill), but its plain silly that we attached no real sticks to this. In fact, it was proposed at the time[1], that much is certain.

>Not true. The Fed and FDIC's powers were expanded thoroughly post crisis.

Their roles perhaps, and we could discuss that, but it isn't what I posited. The real question I have is: What meaningful reform happened? There has already been rollbacks of the Dodd-Frank bill in the intervening years[3] and I'm unaware of any regulatory teeth over the derivatives market, for example.

Whether the FDIC and The Fed have expanded regulatory scope isn't the same thing as passing meaningful reforms.

>It remains unsettled whether breaking up the big banks is the right move for stability. America continues to have a large number of banks per capita relative to other countries.

I will contend that splitting banks up where "main street" banks (traditional loans, checking, savings and other things traditionally associated with mainstream consumer banking) and investment banking should be split. There's no reason the holder of my deposits should also be actively exposing the core safety of the institution by making speculative investments in the derivatives market, for example. Separating concerns is how it used to be, and the only outgrowth of the M&A of the 80s and 90s in the banking sector seems to only be new ways to create riskier investment portfolios. I don't think having these very disparate activities under the same business is a good thing, as you risk the institutions stability, as we saw in 2008, and again, to a lesser extent last year.

Boring banks are good banks. Note however I'm not saying those risky financial opportunities are in and of themselves bad. They aren't, per se, but they should be a separate business entity entirely, and not allowed to cross-pollinate each other to the extent that they do today, if at all.

>What happened in '08 was outside the FDIC's purview. That was the problem. Depositors weren't running, it was the other parts of the system that failed.

I said as much.

EDIT: I initially posited that the FDIC had similar authority prior to the events of 2008-2013. I incorrectly conflated the role of the Resolution Trust Corporation and the FDIC having management over that with the FDIC itself having authority to take a bank into receivership and to seek to sell its assets in-part or in-full, to make depositors whole. That's my memory failing me. I retract this assertion. This is indeed a post 2008 role it has assumed.

[0]: To me "populist shows of retribution" is more guillotine justice than simply enforcing the rule of law, and I think its intentionally combative. All anyone is really asking for here, as upset as I maybe regarding what happened in 2008[2], I'm only asking that we actually prosecute those responsible for the myriad of financial improprieties that took place. I don't know why this is controversial. To re-iterate, I have stated I want to see those culpable stand trial to the fullest extent of the law.

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-can-claw-back-any-200...

[2]: To which I admit, I'm a bit combative over. Look at this way; We know the players, we know the causes, and we even know down to the groups of people who the actors were that were major influences on why things went the way they did, and they all get to walk away, head high? I'm saying that we know what crimes took place and even who committed them, and no case was ever opened, let alone prosecuted. In what other sector could crime happen at this scale, and we know the players, the whens, the hows, and we don't prosecute?

[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/business/congress-passes-...