Someone has the gall to suggest it might give bankstas the idea that the government will step in to keep them from failing, when the government actually has stepped in to keep them afloat and has promised to keep doing so no strings attached:

The bailout fund may have helped avert a financial system collapse but it could reinforce perceptions the government will step in to keep firms from failing, the quarterly report from inspector general Neil Barofsky said.

On top of the 700 billion we handed over to the corporate failures, we also signed trillions of dollars in interest free loans for them. Who knows? Maybe an investment bank or an insurance exec might get the crazy notion they don't need to bother making wise loans or prudent investments. They could just borrow the truckload of free money, invest it in something as simple as T-bills, make record profits simply collecting interest, and pay themselves another round of huge bonuses. News that apparently has the White House angry, again.

In recent days, top Obama administration officials have chided Wall Street firms planning to distribute big bonuses as their bottom lines rebound, noting that many of those same firms continue to benefit from taxpayer assistance, even as millions of Americans remain unemployed.

At the risk sounding like a smartass, allow me review how incentives work: you're an exec making millions of dollars a year in bonuses when high risk bets pay off. And now, thanks to the US taxpayer and their so-called representatives, you not only keep your job when those bets fail catastrophically, you keep making millions of dollars a year. In that scenario, the best way to make millions of dollars every year is to take huge, catastrophic risks. So, why would you ever stop doing it?