Funny, I don't recollect the Bush + Reid + Pelosi + Obama + Paulson trillion dollar bailout bill being sold on the basis that it would create more banks that were too big to fail. But that's what's happening. Bloomberg:

The U.S. government's $160 billion handout to banks from Niagara Falls to Beverly Hills is going mostly to lenders that need it least, putting weaker rivals at risk of being shut down or taken over, analysts say.

``This has the unintended effect [Unintended? Says who?] of making the strong stronger and the weak weaker,'' said Gray Medlin, founder of Carson Medlin Co., a Raleigh, North Carolina, investment bank focused on banking deals....

The government buying spree has so far targeted two dozen regional lenders. One, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., immediately bought a competitor, National City Corp. Another, Saigon National Bank, had almost four times the minimum level of capital before selling a $1.2 million stake.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is doling out cash to recapitalize lenders and jump-start takeovers. ...

``The goal with this over time is to drive consolidation,'' said Ron Farnsworth, chief financial officer of Umpqua Holdings Corp. in Portland, Oregon, which expects to sell a $246 million stake to the government. Takeovers, either independently or helped by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., are ``definitely one of the opportunities we have,'' Farnsworth said.

So, I wonder if President-presumptive Obama knew this was the plan, or not?

This may be a "good" plan, or not; I don't know. I would define "good" as keeping people in their homes and avoiding another Depression, but I don't have any confidence that whoever's driving the bus sees what is "good" as I do. In fact, they're a lot more likely to define good as hanging onto their compensation agreements and throwing a few million people into a permanent underclass of debt slaves.

What I do know is that the bailout was not sold to the American people on the basis that they had to give money to the banks NOW NOW NOW NOW so they could get bigger by buying up more banks.

And when we (for some definition of "we") rush into programs that are justified with lies and ever shifting rationalizations, the results tend not to be "good" (for, again, a definition of good that for most of us, doesn't include looting billions from the Treasury or the end of the rule of law).

Think the Patriot Act; Iraq; think FISA. The modus operandi seems to be the same: A shock, a demand for new powers, cries of NOW NOW NOW NOW that are justified by lies, a press that questions nothing, culminating in a Clusterfuck of epic proportions with the benefits going to the elite. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.