Someone has to state the obvious. Thank you, Gov. Spitzer.

Banks offered for sale junk securities which were misrepresented as high quality. Isn't that criminal?

AIG issued insurance, but they didn't maintain the reserves required by law for insurance. They felt they could get away with it by changing the name of insurance to "credit swaps." Isn't that criminal, too?

Instead of seizing criminal, underwater banks, we're rewarding them. Twice. First with their own bailout of no-strings-attached cash, then by paying off illegal AIG insurance claims. The banks post a profit. Whoopie! Criminality pays!

It seems these powerful corporations are so far above the law, and their influence is so pervasive, they can bend the government to their will and grab taxpayer dollars with the slenderest of pretexts.

Geithner is ignoring the law. The law requires seizure of underwater banks. It requires prosecution of crimes. He is not protecting the financial system, he is shielding criminals and rewarding them.

The FDIC does indeed have the power to seize underwater depository banks, but according to comments made by the chairwoman of the FDIC that statutory power does not extend to seizing large international bank-holding companies like Citi. After all, these large institutions include a complex conglomeration of both regulated and non-regulated entities including credit card operations, brokerages, insurance, currenct trading, and so on with operations in a huge number of companies.

Just this past week, Treasury proposed new regulations to Congress to allow it to handle the orderly collapse of some of these otherwise "too big to fail" institutions.