I think the problem is not "we can't find anyone who did wrong here", but "there are so many who cheated people that we wouldn't know where to start, or we'd have to arrest thousands - so we might as well do nothing about it".
Regardless of punishing those guilty or not (which I think they should be), it's absolutely criminal that virtually nothing has changed in how these companies operate, and that the "too big to fail" companies continue to remain too big to fail. The next time these banks crash - and they will crash - the taxpayers will have to bail them out in the trillions of dollars.
>Honest question: do reasonable really look at the The Great Recession and think that there are "individuals" wholly responsible for what happened?
Yes, that is how we handle complex issues. We look at the people who did the biggest wrong and hold them responsible for most if not all of the blame, even though we understand that there were far more actors who could've greatly impacted the actual harm done. Consider child abuse. There are certain forms where, depending upon reactions from parents and therapy offered, the outcome could vary greatly from extremely harmful to minimal damage to the child. But regardless of the outcome of the harm, and regardless if the outcome was influenced by other parties, we place the guilt of all the harm, both realized and risked, on the one who committed the abuse. We do not need mastery of how the financial system broke to deal out punishment just like we don't need mastery of the pathways by which emotional abuse leads to suicide attempts to punish the abuser.
It isn't perfect, but it is better than just washing our hands after slapping a few wrists when we don't understand all the details.
Regardless of punishing those guilty or not (which I think they should be), it's absolutely criminal that virtually nothing has changed in how these companies operate, and that the "too big to fail" companies continue to remain too big to fail. The next time these banks crash - and they will crash - the taxpayers will have to bail them out in the trillions of dollars.