What visciousness?
Did swat teams descend upon the hold outs?
Were the offices raided?
The exact nature and full extent of what the govt did or did not do may never be fully known. But from the fragmented reports from various places lead me to believe that a huge amount of "influence" was used. No.... no guns were drawn, but when a nation is on a rampage to "eat the rich bankers", then threatening to put you name out into the media, is just as deadly.
There is a much larger and more problematic issue for all of us here in this forum though. We all want to retire early. In general, this cannot happen without investments of one form or another. Ususally this involves at least some mix of stocks. The more the govt starts "pushing and pulling" the strings behind the scenes, the less relavent the numbers of that individual company matter. And the fewer "smart" investors will even touch it.
If the govt said that for the "public good" they needed to intervene at Apple because the price of an IPOD is too much, who in their right mind would invest in Apple any more. What happens at a company where individuals are no longer calling the shots, but the govt is? There is no way to predict or even offer an educated guess what the outcome will be.