Late Capitalism and Late Democracy

What shall we make of the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and the impending doom of AIG? If AIG is not supported by the US Government, despite its greater importance to the wider US economy, particularly the housing market so famously propped up by the nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, then why?
Alisdair Darling of course let the cat out of the bag: we're in the worst place we've been since the end of WWII. Bear Stearns was saved; Lehmann Brothers wasn't. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were saved; AIG won't be. The pattern is clear: an initial intervention is attempted, and then the Government realises that further such interventions are then hoped for and expected. That simply cannot be afforded. Lehmann Brothers had to die: it was sacrificed for the sake of the wider economy, to say that the Government couldn't be relied on to save everything.
Behind this lies a bigger issue. Put simply, capitalism and democracy are less compatible than thought. In a democratic society, particularly what we may soon call late democracy (as per Marx's late capitalism), the population expects the government to act to save the day. So banks do too. They trade irresponsibly to gain the maximum upside during a boom, and expect the government to save them when they go bust, because they expect the government to bail out the depositers, who are also voters.
It's time to decide: who will pay the price? The banks, whose bosses ought to be sued by the governments and not propped up, or Joe Ordinary, who then effectively finances corporate bonuses through the tax system.
But another thought springs to mind. Didn't Joseph Schumpeter, in "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy", argue that late capitalism tends to oligopoly, which lends itself to oligarchy? Look at Russia.
Never has it been clearer that Fukayama was wrong: history is not over. Money is in the hands of anti-democratic powers possessing raw material wealth. After Chelsea and Manchester City, so perhaps more serious institutions. Russia increasingly exercises geopolitical power through the gas pipeline; OPEC has spoken of trying to reestablish the $100 barrel; sovereign wealth funds are increasingly the only remaining wealthy people.
In late democracy, the tensions between oligopolistic late capitalism and populist late democracy grow. The question is, which will go.