Without pointing the finger at any particular bank(s), I suspect that if a bank's profitability shot up from 2002-2007 only to crash recently then there's a good chance it's been heavily involved in laundering drug money, particularly the heroin profits flowing out of Afghanistan. If you're scratching your head as to why the terms "big banks" and "laundering drug money" are in the same sentence, here is a brief synopsis :

#1) narcotics are the world's third biggest industry behind only energy and weapons;
#2) the most profitable narcotics are (by far) heroin and cocaine;
#3) about 85% of the capital from the international narcotics
trade ends up in Western banks;
#4) Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium; #5) Opium production in Afghanistan has smashed all previous records since the U.S. invaded just in time for planting season in 2001;
#6) the profits are typically deposited in off-shore banks and then laundered into the western banking system via low-interest loans for massive construction projects such as the massive condo developments in Dubai and the massive exurban home developments in the American Sunbelt;
#7) As a result of numbers 1-6, capital influx from the narcotics trade is now as important to the western financial system as oil imports are to the western transportation and agriculture systems . . .

A good layman's explanation of how the money works in these matters is Narco Dollars for Beginners: How the Money Works in the Illicit Drug Trade.
http://solari.com/articles/scoop_narco_dummies.htm

This may put the sinister nature of the Fannie/Freddie bailout in a bit more sunlight. All of us are now explicitly on the hook for the profits of the dirtiest of the dirtiest players in the financial arena, even if we've never taken out a mortgage or owned a home.

A lot of the big energy infrastructure projects are being financed with laundered drug money from off-shore money-laundering banks as these banks offer very competitive interest rates (in hopes of quickly laundering the dirty money into clean capital.) If you're a big energy company are you going to finance your pipeline, off-shore well or utility sized solar installation with a 20 year loan at 7% from a clean bank or with one at 5% from a dirty bank?

You might be tempted to say "I'm going to be ethical and go with the loan from the clean bank because I want to 'be the change I want to see'." At least that's what you'll say until you sit down with the company's accounting department to actually run the numbers: A $100 million oil pipeline or solar installation financed at 5% equates out to monthly payments of $66,000. If the project is financed at 7%, the monthly payments will be $77,500. Over the course of a year, that's a savings of $138,000. If your company's stock is trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 30/1 then the difference between the dirty loan at 5% and the clean loan at 7% is $4,140,000 per year to your shareholders.

Bottom line is if you want to satisfy your shareholders - and/or keep your job - you're going to go with the loan at 5%, even if the bank is a suspected money-laundering outfit. The way the laws are currently set up, if you're a publicly traded company you're not going to get in trouble for taking the lower cost loan even if the truth becomes known.

If you don't believe me that this is how it all works, then just read the 1999 Reuters article about Dick Grasso visiting the FARC guerillas to ask them to invest their cocaine profits in Wall Street or watch the clips from the documentary Cocaine Cowboys about how drug lords invested in Florida real estate while buying their way into the inner circle of the Republican party.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnT-CawgPck&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPOAlJ_1ORw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNY5r2i3VdE&feature=related