I realize Nev's comments were directed to Phos, and I don't presume to be answering for Phos, but FWIW I'd like to offer the following response anyway...
If they're being 'punished' it is by the consequences of their own folly, not by anybody else's mean-spirited vindictiveness. That's how free markets are supposed to work: the enterprises that go out of business are the ones that take stupid risks (just as one example).

Would you rather 'punish' future generations of people who did not take those stupid risks, by saddling them with the tax burden and additional national debt at the barrel of a government gun so the stupid risk takers don't have to face the consequences of their actions?

BTW, these aren't just 'banks' — they're investment institutions that garnered vast amounts of wealth for their owners by being among the first to touch credit-based fiat money fed into the system by the Treasury Department's printing presses. That 'money' has depreciated in value with every change of hands ever since it left theirs. That's inflation — a product of government manipulation.

I don't. The voices I hear are saying let the market do its job. There's nothing 'free market' about 'rescuing' a fool with somebody else's money at the barrel of a government gun.

This whole thing is an inevitable by-product of bad monetary policy (among other things) perpetuated by those who have been controlling the US government for decades—and the Austrian school of economic theory has been predicting this as an inevitability the whole time. If you read the articles cited in the links in my earlier post (also here) you'll understand why. Nobody can borrow indefinitely without ending up with a big debt. You can move it around and hide it for a while, but eventually it gets too big to hide, and the music will stop. That is what has happened.

If by 'life support' you mean taxpayer funded (at the barrel of government's gun) corporate socialism, why exactly should the public be so compelled to provide such 'life support'? How much should they be forced to pay? For how long? On the basis of what moral principle can you compel them to give up their property to provide this 'life support' without violating their liberty and essentially robbing bystander Peter to keep the idiot Paul's failed business alive?

Yep. The exact same thing happened in the early 30s (except perhaps for the 'IT guys'). It's not pretty, but it's what happens when fools are allowed to steer whole companies into dangerous waters with the presumption that some special impunity earns them an impromptu taxpayer-funded safety net if anything goes wrong. People do get hurt by foolish managers. I'm not trying to sound cold-hearted, but there's no wisdom in 'saving' a company ruined by fools, just because they've wrapped themselves in a cloak that screams 'Oh the humanity!' at the last minute.

I work in IT with a woman who lost well over a half million in Enron stock options. She didn't expect me, or the rest of the public, to give her a job (let alone replenish the wealth she lost) when that ship went down. She knew that individual welfare was no more morally justified than corporate welfare, and she's a whole lot more careful about who she'll work for and what she'll accept as payment.

You ask "who has been 'bailed out'?" The answer—so far—is nobody. But eventually the thing will almost inevitably get pushed through one way or another. What's fundamentally wrong with it is that it is more of the exact same policy that brought the crisis on in the first place: Using out-of-thin-air debt to cover existing debt. We're better off taking our licks now and starting the recovery process free-market-fashion than postponing the inevitable while simultaneously making it $700+ billion worse — and letting the clowns at the helm off the hook.