Not so fast. Banks are in positions of trust which are easy to abuse. That is a different animal than some ex-im guy selling widgets at a huge market to people who don't know better. Not onlly are they in positions to exploit their delegated trust in the information flow of major economies, they are also in positions that allow them to exploit both their data and verious mechanisms of market micro-structure through the revolving door relationship with the regulatory infrastructure. In other words, nobody outside of finance really has a clue about how to regulate a bank...and 9/10 bankers barely have a clue about anything in the bank that they don't directly deal with. This limits the amount of people that are feasible to regulate these banks. Which means that being a senior executive is in an of itself a pathway to exploit this type of second derivative opportunity that comes from holding onto a scarce commodity that is on the one hand in high demand by the enforcemnet patrons in government, and on the other hand, can be exploited in and of its own right through various commercial channels both legitimate and less so.

Well, banks are earning money, and if it ends up this money is essentially just a "gift" to banks from the rest of us in society, that's a problem.

If you object and say "but they deserve these profits!" then you're arguing that they are contributing to productivity (and then the profits would be fine)

The only reason people think that banks profits are undeserved in comparison to the other industries, is because people don't care to understand banking.

If you take, for example, pharmaceuticals or the food industry, you'd find a lot more f'ed up things, with people massively taken for a ride. But apparently it's not hip to hate on those industries yet.