Governments have spent more than 12.5 trillion dollars trying to rescue the banks from themselves and the global economy from a 1930’s style depression.
They may have been a bit slow of the mark trying to get to grips with the issue, and there certainly have been some mistakes none bigger than former U.S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson’s decision to let Lehman Brothers collapse. But they did step in. And there certainly are signs the economy may have hit the bottom.
Investment banks in the first quarter certainly came up trumps, beating the markets best guess on their earnings.
Losses were not bad as many thought at Citigroup ($966 million) or Morgan Stanley ($578 million).
In the first three months of this year Goldman Sachs ($1.66 billion), JP Morgan Chase ($1.52 billion), Credit Suisse ($1.71 billion) made respectable profits.
Is it time to pay for the clear up? Should governments slap the banks with a windfall tax?
![[QODLink]](http://english.aljazeera.net/mritems/Images/2012/2/13/20122131780495734_16.jpg "Suppressing the narrative in Bahrain")
