"once government has gotten its hooks into any private entity has it ever really loosed its grip entirely?"

- yes, privatization is happening all over the world...in my neck of the woods, the provincial government sold off a large government ferry corporation (with the largest ferries in the world) and a lucrative government natural gas utility (now owned by an american corporation)...governments will always retain the right to regulate business, but i don't believe that the US government wants to keep all that bank stock they have been buying...after the shit stops flicking off the fan, i think the US gov't will sell that stock, hopefully at a profit, and use it to buy more printing presses for the federal reserve