The financial crisis was not caused by the banks. It was caused by regulations passed by libtards in the government that forced banks to make loans to Democrat constituencies regardless if the borrowers were good credit risks.

Members of the President's financial crisis commission explained this in detail in what must be the most important minority rebuttal ever to be buried by the LMSM. Bet you never even knew it existed. Download it here (pdf): [link to fcic-static.law.stanford.edu] A measure of how accurate and correct it is can be found by looking at the number of government shills who are still attacking it on the web.

The commissions paid to the bankers were guaranteed by contract. Those contracts were protected by the same contract law that protects your home and business from unreasonable attack by private citizens and governments alike.

Only a fool would challenge the legitimacy of contract law, it's probably the last protection that the government doesn't have under all-out attack. And even at that, the government ran roughshod over contract law during the nationalizing of the auto industry, unilaterally canceling contractually-guaranteed debt to hand the automotive companies to the very unions that destroyed them. Eminent domain abuse is also rampant.

The issue of the bonuses to bankers pales in comparison to the consequences of weakening the protections offered by contract law. It would be insane to give the government any sort of lever they could use to weaken or breach those protections. If we give the government the idea that they can cancel any contract that they don't like, what protection will we have left from government run amok?