What we should have done is saved the banks only to break them up. And it's not too late to do just that.

Yep. "too big to fail" is just too big, period.

In fact, at that time, mainstream economists expressed the same concern which I am expressing now: gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/12/

This is not the same concern you're expressing unfortunately. You're arguing elsewhere that the government punishing outright fraud is manipulating the market and choosing winners and losers. I see nothing about that at your link and nothing that defends your belief in that. He's saying that the fed and the government should step in and make decisions about trying to buoy the market, which is what you want them to do when the economy might go belly up so that people don't all lose their jobs and riot and starve. I do see that it's where you got the phrase 'government should pick winners and losers' from however but the context is vastly different than what the original article we're commenting on is about.

I dont disagree that JP Morgan should not be punished. I already explained that. You're confusing some things. Another example of your confusion is you mentioned here that the government is punishing fraud; but in reality, they punished them in secret for "unwritten rules" which were broken.

A regulator should not pick and choose who to punish, in secret, and for unwritten rules. That's ridiculous, and this kind of secrecy and ambiguity is not an example of good governance, fair treatment, or competitive markets.

In a competitive market where government treat everyone equally (no picking winners and losers) everyone abides by the same rules, transparently. That's not what happened.

In fact, when government decides to meddle in markets in secret and without any written rule or law, this raises fear of exactly that. Probably in this case, the end result seems to be not unjust, but the method is horrible, and I have no idea why they did it this way.

And yes, this kind of market meddling, or "picking winners or losere," is a type of market meddling, not unlike what I linked to.

I would suggest going back over the article to see where your confusion started, and also the posts here, and my other response to you.

In a competitive market government should treat everyone equally by the same rules. Big banks do not exist in a competitive market as they are heavily shielded from competition, protected from failure, and massively subsidized by the government. As such they should be required to adhere to far more stringent rules.

I do agree that those rules should be transparent and not "unwritten" though.

I think we are not in disagreement here.