So far this year, 73 US banks have failed, with resolution handled by the FDIC. Bank failures don't have to be horrific.
We would arguably be better off as a country if rather than bailing out the big banks they had been taken over, recapitalized, and reprivatized.
They aren't hardly at the scale of Lehman/BoA though - its hard to imagine a failure of one of those banks being handled by the FDIC with anything approaching grace or control.
While the greater point may be true, it does have the benefit of hindsight to a certain degree.
At the same time - after seeing the effects of Lehman's collapse, the regulators really didn't have any other choice than saving those banks. The option of not acting really wasn't there.
True, obviously action was necessary, but it didn't have to be no-strings bailouts. At the very least, the bankers who ran their banks into [probable] insolvency should have been removed from control, and their shares and options rendered worthless.
