The CEPR calculated that, all told, every family in America contributed $300 in tax money toward subsidizing the profits of top banks through artificially low interest rates. "Most people, if you asked them what do you want to do with $300, I doubt the answer would be, 'Why don't we subsidize the large banks?'" said Dean Baker, the group's co-director. "A lot of things we think are important cost much less -- $30 billion annually would go a long way to subsidizing health care [costs for American families]."

The worst part is that these banks are then taking that money and paying bonuses to their supposedly brilliant employees -- who really just benefited from an oligarchical financial system that rewards failure. OK, I lied, that's not really the worst part. The worst part is that these subsidies are hurting competition -- and leading to higher prices for consumers. In a recent speech (PDF FILE), hedge fund guru David Einhorn explained that "the now larger too-big-to-fails are beginning to take advantage of developing oligopolies. Even as the government spends trillions to subsidize mortgage rates, the resulting discount is not being passed to homeowners but is being kept by mortgage originators who are earning record profits per mortgage originated. Recently, Goldman upgraded Wells Fargo partly based on its ability to earn long-term oligopolistic mortgage origination spreads."

So that's what our banking system has been reduced to: banks borrowing money at artificially low rates to inflate their profits while still charging consumers artificially high rates -- and then paying themselves bonuses for their brilliance.