double-dipping?

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A news item says that Bank of America, one of the biggies in this country, is close to an $8.5 billion settlement with blue chip investors who claim the bank sold them poor quality mortgage backed securities.

Perhaps I've got this wrong but wasn't it the banks, among others, who concocted impossible mortgages and sold them to an unwary tax-payer constituency? When the mortgages went belly-up and it looked as if the banks might fail, they were propped up by the federal government because they were "too big to fail." The federal government used taxpayer money to prop up the banks, which, rather than easing the pain of mortgage-holders, sat on the tax-payer money ... which they are now going to pay to blue-chip stockholders who (as distinct from the floundering taxpayer) have the wherewithal to sue.

So the taxpayer gets to pay for the mistakes and manipulations of those who helped to drown them in the first place. Is there some reason why this should not lead to resentment? Is there some reason why this should not lead to bitterness?

I recall again the Somali intelligence officer's observation about the pirates off the coast of his impoverished country: "If you do not share your wealth with us, we will share our poverty with you."
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