I'm just wondering where the giant pool of people who understand the complexities of the financial system but don't have ties to said same system are?

With all due respect to Mr. Krugman, for years the entire financial industry has been schooling itself on how to tilt the table so the ball always rolls into their pocket, and what we are fighting here is not an entitlement mentality but institutionalized corruption. Before the crash is was private industry corruption (the liar loans, the ratings game, the reductions in capital gains taxes and hedge fund fee system) and now it's been nationalized. Did you think the corruption would disappear because the government owns 80%?

For years the financial industry was the drug dealer and the government was the bodega owner who laundered the profits. Now it's both, and it has 80 years of systemization to undo and it won't happen overnight. This scandal will follow others until the system re-writes itself into an earnest business rather than a corrupt one.

I, for one, agree with Taleb that banks should only be allowed to operate as banks, and should not be permitted to play with other people's money, and there are any number of smaller banks around the country who can say that that model works fine, since there are many banks that operated using traditional guidelines that are still healthy. The problems always seem to arise when banks start trying to make ever-higher profits rather than making ever-better performing loans.

Never mind 165 million in bonuses, wait till the public finds out how much wall street tarp recipients have spent on lobbying congress NOT to change the rules so they can keep their defunct and debunked business model the way it is....