Have they learned nothing from the past four years? Just that they can get away with it?

If I had to guess, it's less so "planned" and more so that the various institutional and regulatory incentives make this sort of outcome extremely likely.

I think this hits the nail on the head. I think after 2008 they setup a system (set of regulations/rules/policies not some group of monocle wearing dudes in a room scheming) where the BigBanks will eat the SmallBanks, the FDIC will insure what they do and some Federal agency will eat the SmallBank failures and then BigBank can swoop in as a "savior" essentially consuming SmallBank but all that is left is the profitable parts at that point.

Use a local credit union instead of a bank.

Sort of like what's about to happen to housing prices, maybe.

Just wait until Uncle Sam foots the bill directly.

He has quite the "ability to pay".

Right, but he also then has a lot more incentive to keep costs down and the power to enforce some requirements and controls to keep costs down.

Seems to work OK in every other civilized country on Earth.

JRE is breadth first search, within a certain...domain.

Pretty sure cable news is legally designated as "entertainment".

The damage is real.

Payments can be reduced to packets, for one.

This was a huge theme throughout the television series The Wire. Here is a clip that specifically shows Goodhart's law working in education.

https://youtu.be/_ogxZxu6cjM?t=62

The open protocol could start small and gradually grow over time, maintaining backwards compatibility.

The incentives aren't there, of course.

They can sell their shares.