[quote=briansd1][quote=evolusd]
I agree completely – there wasn’t much anyone could do to turn the ship to avoid the financial glacier we were approaching. What irks me the most is how the people and firms that caused the most harm from their greed and short-sightedness were the ones that got the most bailout funds/government assistance. The moral hazard caused by this will haunt us for years to come.
They should have allocated the bailout funds to the people and institutions that DID NOT act irresponsibly – reward the GOOD behavior of the fiscally conservative. Let us reap the benefits of acting responsible through a period when everyone was going nuts![/quote]
evolusd, you have to consider that Wall Street is such a central, systemic component of our economic system that not bailing out Wall Street was not an option.
Of course, the government could have acted differently with regard to individual executives.
So I think that that bailing out the financial system was necessary. And overtime, it will be necessary to tax that system for the past bailouts and future bailouts.
The irony, evolusd is that good behavior does not need bailouts. What we need to do now is directly provide jobs to the people who don’t have jobs because the financial bailouts are not trickling down to jobs for the umemployed.[/quote]
I completely understand the systematic risk of the finanial system. However, I feel they should have put the worst offenders (AIG, GM, etc) through an orderly liquidation and provided cheap or government-backed financing to the RESPONSIBLE competitors that still had strong balance sheets to purchase the assets of the dogs.
Sure, it would have obviously been at discounted prices, but at least the smart companies would have then grown to be powerhouses and the idiots that led us into the hole would have been dissolved. They way they went about it made those dogs bigger than they were before!
