They threaten us with TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it), but fail to detail EXACTLY the consequences of letting things fail.
Quite frankly, I don’t give a darn if all the Wall Street firms and banks fail. If they are headed for failure, it’s because they took risks which they could not afford to take…probably because they expected to be bailed out. Talk about an “entitlement” mentality, the financial industry truly believes they are above the rest of us and are owed huge profits at the expense of taxpayers and working citizens.
We do need to protect depositors who are covered by FDIC and we should shore up the SIPC, and perhaps money market accounts to a certain amount…but we do not need to bail out every moron who owns mortgage debt, credit default swaps, corporate bonds or other “riskier” paper. Sorry, but that’s why they were being paid higher rates than those of us who’ve been shafted by historically low rates (CDs, savings accts, Treasuries, etc.) for so many years.
Let the over-leveraged idiots fail. Newer, stronger, better-managed banks and institutions will spring up to replace them. Institution that don’t lever-up and perhaps even have full-reserve banking status. Wouldn’t that be better for our society in the long-run?
