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The banks are not lending, at least from what I see. They were so wild and reckless back in the good times that they got burned terribly.

I won't dispute that bankers' privileged treatment in the 2008 crash merits populist scorn. But unfortunately, without a bank bailout, there probably would have been a worldwide depression.

The Great Bailout is mostly over for the banks. But for those troubled behemoths of the nation's housing bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lifeline from Washington just keeps getting longer.

Banks were once places to hold money and were very careful in lending to finance families as they built a future - bought homes, bought cars, took out student loans.

When the banks grow to or when these financial institutions grow to such a size that they can't sustain themselves, or what have you, they have problems, economic problems, or financial problems, they shouldn't be able to look back to you and I, the taxpayer, to be bailed out.

We need to think deeply about whether we can sustain banks that are not only too big to fail, but potentially too big to bail.

Let's be honest: It wasn't just the banks who messed up. There were a lot of people who tried to buy assets they couldn't afford. That's a reality.

The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.

It's true that monetary policy was too lax for too long, and the government encouraged lending to people who were unlikely to repay their loans.

Most Ohioans would be surprised to know that the same Wall Street megabanks which received bailouts from taxpayers in 2009 also receive taxpayer-funded advantages today simply because of their 'too big to fail' status.