[quote=AN]CAR, where did I ever said it was OK for any of these bailout? Last I check, I gripe about all bailouts, not just pension bailouts. You fail to see that leverage investors are no different than the million of Americans who leverage to buy their home (not for investment). You’re free to judge your friend(s) all you want, but when you make blanket statements like leverage = failure, that’s where I’ve proven that you’re wrong with your broad strokes.

BTW, last I check, the many small business owners who leverage to start their business and fail didn’t get bailed out. So, again, your broad stroke brush is horrible.

By your logic, feel free to vote out all who voted for bail outs, regardless of party line. After all, it’s those in government that voted for the bailouts. Are you willing to do that? I would.[/quote]

AN, please directly reference the quote where I said that leverage = failure. It doesn’t always lead to failure, but lots of leverage, especially when everybody is leveraging up at the same time to buy assets because people are expecting future price increases, will fail more often than not, IMHO. I’ve said before that self-liquidating debt is fine, and debt that a person can easily pay back is fine, too; but when people are leveraging up to speculate (and then expect everyone else to bail them out later because “nobody could see it coming”), it is not fine.

Also, as someone who is currently fighting the BK of a small business that owes us money, and as a result have spent far too much time listening to BK hearings, I would definitely say that all of us are paying for these deadbeats…and yes, I’m judging many of them. Like BG said, you ought to sit in on these hearings so that you can get a better understanding of how people got into debt, and how the creditors (and the customers of the institutional creditors, and taxpayers who are bailing out these institutions, too) are bailing out all of these deadbeats. Go to the hearings, and you’ll see it’s even worse than you would ever imagine. And the bar for declaring BK is way too low, IMHO. It’s sickening.