it is a really tricky one this, i have no sympathy for the fat cat bosses who have creamed off their bonuses and lucrative salaries, without in some circumstances really understanding the nature or implications of some of the transactions that their organisations were and are still involved in. I agree with earlier comments, to strip these individuals of their personal fortunes would be just, however it would in practice be very difficult to do.

Legislation should though be introduced that ensures that in the event of these types of circumstances occurring failure is not rewarded, to be paid large sums of money to exit businesses that they have destroyed is obscene and defies the ethos of capitalism, no they should be turfed out with only their cardboard boxes of personal belongings like their employees have to endure.

I sort of also do not have a huge amount of sympathy for the share holders, the value of shares can rise as well as fall, we all know this, it is what playing the market is essentially about, had they made huge gains they would not be looking to hand over some of their profits in an altruistic gesture, no they would have thought how wonderful the whole market was and how smart they were for playing it so well, so sorry, they took the risk they should shoulder the pain.

Now as for the bail out, hmmm yes in a true capitalist system companies should live and die by the sword, the problem here is the size of the exposures and the interconnecting web or labyrinth that is global finance.

To have let AIG fail for instance would have in my opinion been catastrophic, the impact upon the global economy would have had significant and far reaching repercussions, the company i work for places insurance on behalf of company's our clients place over $20B or premiums with AIG alone, all of those companies would find themselves uninsured and having to purchase again at least the legally required insurances, many of these are them selves struggling in the current financial environment, so it is fair to say that a reasonable amount of them could have failed themselves. Yet further job losses resulting in the workers from these companies losing their jobs, this in turn resulting in these workers then struggling to meet their own financial liabilities, for example their home loan payments, and thus the cycle perpetuates itself as yet more banks then begin to suffer from bad debts.

This however is insignificant in comparison to the $360B of sub prime lending that AIG had reinsured for the main banking houses, a concept i still struggle to understand, the main reason for a bank to exist being to lend money, and live off of the interest earned as a result, thus the bank needs to be an expert in assessing the risk and potential for its lenders to be able to pay back loans owed. This would in my view make banks the best organisations to judge credit risk, their very existence being to make money from the successful lending of loans.

With this in mind then why if a bank came to you with a parcel of debt would you be in any way interested in insuring the thing for them, they know their risks better than anyone, they make as much money as they can, we all hear of banks annual profit figures, they are never small and they seem hell bent on increasing these year on year. So why as an insurer, NOT a banker would you look at a book of debts, that the bank who assessed them initially was not comfortable with, lets be honest if they were would they be spending premiums, that would otherwise boost profits and therefore bonuses, i think we all know the answer to that one! and as the insurer say yes i am happy to insures these potential bad debts for you. It defies logic, the banks as experts feel that their risks are too great to carry in house, then lets be honest these are quite simply very bad risks!

The banks basically realised that they were hugely exposed and looked to offset their risks, they passed the shit sandwich so to speak no other phrase for it. In doing this they created the king domino, AIG, not to have bailed out this company would have taken out loads more institutions and companies globally, I am not sure what a global financial meltdown would have looked like but can imagine it, and letting AIG go to the wall would have preempted this.

The economy of the world is now so interdependent that to not bail out one part could well result in many other parts failing, the dominos are i am afraid all reliant upon one another, therefore even though it is not in the nature of capitalism i feel there is no option other than to bail out these organisations, to let any fail will result in world wide pain.

BUT a thorough review and overhaul of the practices needs to be conducted, never again should such "sharp" and unregulated practices be allowed to happen, some people have made themselves very rich, obscenely so at what now looks likely to be the American Tax payers expense, unfortunately their companies in effect are holding the US government to ransom, to not bail them out is unthinkable for the US and the rest of the world.

Find the guilty executives, name and shame, and make sure that they are never able to hold office or similar positions ever again, these are the real villains, polished and elegantly dressed, blackberrys instead of guns they have caused untold pain, and they should be punished.